REESE  LIBRARY 

„ 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 


Studies 


BY  W.  D.  HOWELLS 


AUTHOR   OF 


LITERARY    FRIENDS  AND   ACQUAINTANCE 

"HEROINES   OF   FICTION" 
"MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS"   ETC. 


ILL  US  TR  A  TED 


\ 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

1902 


i^,  •  i'*  '•£*  IT 
V  •  L 


Copyright,  1902,  by  HARPBK  &  BROTHERS. 


All  rights  reserved. 
Published  October,  1902. 


I   J    ^J 

u 
wot 

MAIKI 


A    WORD    OF    EXPLANATION 

PERHAPS  the  reader  may  not  feel  in  these  papers 
1  that  inner  solidarity  which  the  writer  is  conscious 
of ;  and  it  is  in  this  doubt  that  the  writer  wishes  to  offer 
a  word  of  explanation.  He  owns,  as  he  must,  that  they 
have  every  appearance  of  a  group  of  desultory  sketches 
and  essays,  without  palpable  relation  to  one  another, 
or  superficial  allegiance  to  any  central  motive.  Yet 
he  ventures  to  hope  that  the  reader  who  makes  his  way 
through  them  will  be  aware,  in  the  retrospect,  of  some 
thing  like  this  relation  and  this  allegiance. 

For  my  own  part,  if  I  am  to  identify  myself  with  the 
writer  who  is  here  on  his  defence,  I  have  never  been 
able  to  see  much  difference  between  what  seemed  to 
me  Literature  and  what  seemed  to  me  Life.  If  I  did 
not  find  life  in  what  professed  to  be  literature,  I  dis 
abled  its  profession,  and  possibly  from  this  habit,  now 
inveterate  with  me,  I  am  never  quite  sure  of  life  unless 
J  find  literature  in  it.  Unless  the  thing  seen  reveals 
ito  me  an  intrinsic  poetry,  and  puts  on  phrases  that 
clothe  it  pleasingly  to  the  imagination,  I  do  not  much 
care  for  it ;  but  if  it  will  do  this,  I  do  not  mind  how  poor 
or  common  or  squalid  it  shows  at  first  glance :  it  chal 
lenges  my  curiosity  and  keeps  my  sympathy.  In 
stantly  I  love  it  and  wish  to  share  my  pleasure  in  it 
with  some  one  else,  or  as  many  ones  else  as  I  can  get 
to  look  or  listen.  If  the  thing  is  something  read,  rather 
than  seen,  I  am  not  anxious  about  the  matter:  if  it 

iii 


A  WORD   OF   EXPLANATION 

is  like  life,  I  know  that  it  is  poetry,  and  take  it  to  my 
heart.  There  can  be  no  offence  in  it  for  which  its  truth 
will  not  make  me  amends. 

Out  of  this  way  of  thinking  and  feeling  about  these 
two  great  things,  about  Literature  and  Life,  there  may 
have  arisen  a  confusion  as  to  which  is  which.  But  I 
do  not  wish  to  part  them,  and  in  their  union  I  have 
found,  since  I  learned  my  letters,  a  joy  in  them  both 
which  I  hope  will  last  till  I  forget  my  letters. 

"So  was  it  when  my  life  began; 
So  is  it,  now  I  am  a  man; 
So  be  it  when  I  shall  grow  old." 

It  is  the  rainbow  in  the  sky  for  me;  and  I  have 
seldom  seen  a  sky  without  some  bit  of  rainbow  in  it. 
Sometimes  I  can  make  others  see  it,  sometimes  not; 
but  I  always  like  to  try,  and  if  I  fail  I  harbor  no  worse 
thought  of  them  than  that  they  have  not  had  their  eyes 
examined  and  fitted  with  glasses  which  would  at  least 
have  helped  their  vision. 

W.  D.  H. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS    .    .  i 

WORRIES  OF  A  WINTER  WALK 36 

CONFESSIONS  OF  A  SUMMER  COLONIST 45,* 

THE  EDITOR'S   RELATIONS  WITH  THE  YOUNG  CON 
TRIBUTOR      63 

SUMMER  ISLES  OF  EDEN 78 

WILD  FLOWERS  OF  THE  ASPHALT 89 

LAST  DAYS  IN  A  DUTCH  HOTEL 95 

SOME  ANOMALIES  OF  THE  SHORT  STORY    .    .    .    .  no 

A  CIRCUS  IN  THE  SUBURBS 125 

A  SHE  HAMLET ,132 

SPANISH  PRISONERS  OF  WAR 141 

THE  MIDNIGHT  PLATOON 154 

THE  BEACH  AT  ROCKAWAY 161 

AMERICAN  LITERARY  CENTRES 173  * 

SAWDUST  IN  THE  ARENA 187 

AT  A  DIME  MUSEUM 193 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE  IN  EXILE 202  x 

THE  HORSE  SHOW 206 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  SUMMER 216 

ESTHETIC  NEW  YORK  FIFTY-ODD  YEARS  AGO    .    .  222 

FROM  NEW  YORK  INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 228 

v 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY     .    .  240 

STACCATO  NOTES  OF  A  VANISHED  SUMMER  ....  253 

THE  ART  OF  THE  ADSMITH 265 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  PLAGIARISM 273 

PURITANISM  IN  AMERICAN  FICTION 278 

THE  WHAT  AND  THE  How  IN  ART 284 

POLITICS  OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 290 

STORAGE 298 

"  FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O"  .    .    .  309 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

"  ON  THE  DOWN  EAST  COAST  " Frontispiece 

"  IT  PROFESSED  TO  BE  SUNNY,  AND  THERE 
WAS  REALLY  SOME  SORT  OF  HARD  GLIT 
TER  IN  THE  AIR  "  Facing  p.  38 

"  THE     COTTAGES    .     .     .     ARE     DROPPED     AS 

NEAR   THE    OCEAN    AS    MAY    BE  "...  50 
"  IN  WHATEVER  SORT  OUR  COLONISTS  AMUSE 
THEMSELVES,  IT  IS  WITH  THE  LEAST  POS 
SIBLE  CEREMONY  "         5& 

"  IN  THE  PRETTY   PUBLIC   GARDEN  "...  80 

THE     TORTOISE     AND     HIS     FRIENDS.      ...  80 

PADRE  GIACOMO  ISSAVERDENS "       "        84 

"...   GROTESQUE      WITH      WIND-WORN      AND 

WAVE-WORN  ROCKS  "  "       "        86 

A  BERMUDA  HOUSE "       "        86 

"...  SUCH  SWAMPY  EXPANSES  AS  THE 
CONVERGING  SURFACE  ROADS  FORM  AT 

DEAD  MAN'S  CURVE  " "       "        90 

"  I    CANNOT    PROMISE    THE    VISITOR    TO    THE 
ROOF  GARDEN  THAT  HE  WILL  FIND  GOLD 
EN-ROD  THERE   EVERY   NIGHT  "          ...          "       "        94 
ON  THE  DUNES  AT   SCHEVENINGEN     ....          "       "        98 
"  PRETTY  IS  THE  WORD  FOR  HER  FACE  "      .      .          "       "      106 

WAITING  FOR  THEIR  TURN "       "      128 

"  YOU  NEVER  CEASED  TO  FEEL  .  .  .  THAT 
IT  WAS  A  WOMAN  WHO  WAS  DOING  THAT 
MELANCHOLY  DANE  "  "  "  134 

vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

SPANISH  PRISONERS  OF  WAR Facing  p.  144 

AFTER  DINNER  "  "  150 

"  THEY  STOOD  SLOUCHED  IN  DIM  AND  SOLEMN 

PHALANX  UNDER  THE  NIGHT  SKY  "  .  .  "  "156 

ROCKAWAY  BEACH "  "  162 

"IT  IS  NOT  PICTURESQUE,  OR  POETIC,  OR 

DRAMATIC;  IT  IS  QUEER" "  "  170 

"  'I  HOPE  I'M  NOT  DISTURBING  YOU  ANY  '"  .  "  "  198 
"  THE  EFFECT  IS  THAT  THEY  ARE  THERE 

TO  BE  SEEN"  "  "  208 

"  WITH  THE  HORSES  THEMSELVES  I  COULD 

FIND  NO  FAULT  " "  "  212 

"  THE  MOWING-LANDS  ALONE  ARE  RICH  "  .  "  "  230 
"  THE  GREAT  SQUARE  HOUSES  .  .  .  PAINTED 

WHITE" "  "  234 

AN  ASPECT  OF  PORTSMOUTH  FROM  THE  PIS- 

CATAQUA "  "  238 

"  THE  WEATHER-BEATEN  MANSION  OF  SIR 

WILLIAM  PEPPERRELL  " "  "254 

THE  VILLAGE  SMITHY,  KITTERY  POINT ...  "  "  256 

SIR  WILLIAM  PEPPERRELL "  "  260 

"  THE  HILLS  .  .  .  THAT  CHANGE  WITH  THE 

STEAMER'S  COURSE  " "  "  310 

"  IN  THE  SPRING  .  .  .  THE  RIVER  SCALES 

ITS  BANKS  " 3H 

"  THE  HOUSE  -  BOAT  DWELLERS,  WHOSE 

SLUGGISH    CRAFT    LAY    MOORED    AMONG 

THE  WILLOWS  " 3*8 

TOWS  OF  COAL  BARGES 32° 

"...  STOPPING  TO  PUT  OFF  OR  TAKE  ON 

MERCHANDISE  OR  MEN  " "   "   $22 


LITERATURE    AND    LIFE 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

1  THINK  that  every  man  ought  to  work  for  his  ( 
living,  without  exception,  and  that,  when  he  has 
once  avouched  his  willingness  to  work,  society  should 
provide  him  with  work  and  warrant  him  a  living.  I 
do  not  think  any  man  ought  to  live  by  an  art.  A 
man's  art  should  be  his  privilege,  when  he  has  proven 
his  fitness  to  exercise  it,  and  has  otherwise  earned 
his  daily  bread;  and  its  results  should  be  free  to  all. 
There  is  an  instinctive  sense  of  this,  even  in  the  midst 
of  the  grotesque  confusion  of  our  economic  being; 
people  feel  that  there  is  something  profane,  something 
impious,  in  taking  money  for  a  picture,  or  a  poem,  or 
a  statue.  Most  of  all,  the  artist  himself  feels  this. 
He  puts  on  a  bold  front  with  the  world,  to  be  sure,  and 
brazens  it  out  as  Business;  but  he  knows  very  well 
that  there  is  something  false  and  vulgar  in  it;  and 
that  the  work  which  cannot  be  truly  priced  in  money 
cannot  be  truly  paid  in  money.  He  can,  of  course, 
say  that  the  priest  takes  money  for  reading  the  mar 
riage  ^  service,  for  christening  the  new-born  babe,  and 
for  saying  the  last  office  for  the  dead;  that  the  physi 
cian  sells  healing;  that  justice  itself  is  paid  for;  and 
that  he  is  merely  a  party  to  the  thing  that  is  and  must 
be.  He  can  say  that,  as  the  thing  is,  unless  he  sells  his 

I 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

art  he  cannot  live,  that  society  will  leave  him  to  starve 
if  he  does  not  hit  its  fancy  in  a  picture,  or  a  poem,  or  a 
statue ;  and  all  this  is  bitterly  true.  He  is,  and  he  must 
be,  only  too  glad  if  there  is  a  market  for  his  wares. 
Without  a  market  for  his  wares  he  must  perish,  or  turn 
to  making  something  that  will  sell  better  than  pictures, 
or  poems,  or  statues.  All  the  same,  the  sin  and  the 
shame  remain,  and  the  averted  eye  sees  them  still,  with 
its  inward  vision.  Many  will  make  believe  otherwise, 
but  I  would  rather  not  make  believe  otherwise;  and  in 
trying  to  write  of  Literature  as  Business  I  am  tempted 
to  begin  by  saying  that  Business  is  the  opprobrium  of 
Literature. 


Literature  is  at  once  the  most  intimate  and  the  most 
articulate  of  the  arts.  It  cannot  impart  its  effect 
through  the  senses  or  the  nerves  as  the  other  arts  can ; 
it  is  beautiful  only  through  the  intelligence;  it  is  the 
mind  speaking  to  the  mind;  until  it  has  been  put  into 
absolute  terms,  of  an  invariable  significance,  it  does 
not  exist  at  all.  It  cannot  awaken  this  emotion  in 
one,  and  that  in  another ;  if  it  fails  to  express  precisely 
the  meaning  of  the  author,  if  it  does  not  say  him,  it 
says  nothing,  and  is  nothing.  So  that  when  a  poet 
has  put  his  heart,  much  or  little,  into  a  poem,  and  sold 
it  to  a  magazine,  the  scandal  is  greater  than  when  a 
painter  has  sold  a  picture  to  a  patron,  or  a  sculptor 
has  modelled  a  statue  to  order.  These  are  artists  less 
articulate  and  less  intimate  than  the  poet;  they  are 
more  exterior  to  their  work;  they  are  less  personally 
in  it;  they  part  with  less  of  themselves  in  the  dicker. 
It  does  not  change  the  nature  of  the  case  to  say  that 
Tennyson  and  Longfellgw  and  Emerson  sold  the  poems 
in  which  they  couched  the  most  mystical  messages 

2 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

their  genius  was  charged  to  bear  mankind.  They 
submitted  to  the  conditions  which  none  can  escape; 
but  that  does  not  justify  the  conditions,  which  are 
none  the  less  the  conditions  of  hucksters  because  they 
are  imposed  upon  poets.  If  it  will  serve  to  make  my 
meaning  a  little  clearer,  we  will  suppose  that  a  poet 
has  been  crossed  in  love,  or  has  suffered  some  real 
sorrow,  like  the  loss  of  a  wife  or  child.  He  pours  out 
his  broken  heart  in  verse  that  shall  bring  tears  of  sa 
cred  sympathy  from  his  readers,  and  an  editor  pays 
him  a  hundred  dollars  for  the  right  of  bringing  his 
verse  to  their  notice.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  poem 
was  not  written  for  these  dollars,  but  it  is  perfectly 
true  that  it  was  sold  for  them.  The  poet  must  use  his 
emotions  to  pay  his  provision  bills;  he  has  no  other 
means ;  society  does  not  propose  to  pay  his  bills  for  him. 
Yet,  and  at  the  end  of  the  ends,  the  unsophisticated  wit 
ness  finds  the  transaction  ridiculous,  finds  it  repulsive, 
finds  it  shabby.  Somehow  he  knows  that  if  our  huck 
stering  civilization  did  not  at  every  moment  violate  the  \ 
eternal  fitness  of  things,  the  poet's  song  would  have  ! 
been  given  to  the  world,  and  the  poet  would  have  been  j 
cared  for  by  the  whole  human  brotherhood,  as  any  man  ' 
should  be  who  does  the  duty  that  every  man  owes  it.  \ 

The  instinctive  sense  of  the  dishonor  which  money- 
purchase  does  to  art  is  so  strong  that  sometimes  a 
man  of  letters  who  can  pay  his  way  otherwise  refuses 
pay  for  his  work,  as  Lord  Byron  did,  for  a  while,  from 
a  noble  pride,  and  as  Count  Tolstoy  has  tried  to  do, 
from  a  noble  conscience.  But  Byron's  publisher 
profited  by  a  generosity  which  did  not  reach  his  read 
ers;  and  the  Countess  Tolstoy  collects  the  copyright 
which  her  husband  foregoes ;  so  that  these  two  eminent 
instances  of  protest  against  business  in  literature  may 
be  said  not  to  have  shaken  its  money  basis.  I  know 
of  no  others ;  but  there  may  be  many  that  I  am  culpa- 

3 


LITERATURE    AND    LIFE 

bly  ignorant  of.  Still,  I  doubt  if  there  are  enough  to 
affect  the  fact  that  Literature  is  Business  as  well  as 
Art,  and  almost  as  soon.  At  present  business  is  the 
only  human  solidarity;  we  are  all  bound  together 
with  that  chain,  whatever  interests  and  tastes  and 
principles  separate  us,  and  1  feel  quite  sure  that  in 
writing  of  the  Man  of  Letters  as  a  Man  of  Business  I 
shall  attract  far  more  readers  than  I  should  in  writing 
of  him  as  an  Artist.  Besides,  as  an  artist  he  has  been 
done  a  great  deal  already ;  and  a  commercial  state  like 
ours  has  really  more  concern  in  him  as  a  business  man. 
Perhaps  it  may  sometime  be  different ;  I  do  not  believe 
it  will  till  the  conditions  are  different,  and  that  is  a  long 
way  off. 

II 

In  the  mean  time  I  confidently  appeal  to  the  read 
er's  imagination  with  the  fact  that  there  are  several 
men  of  letters  among  us  who  are  such  good  men  of 
business  that  they  can  command  a  hundred  dollars 
a  thousand  words  for  all  they  write.  It  is  easy  to 
write  a  thousand  words  a  day,  and,  supposing  one  of 
these  authors  to  work  steadily,  it  can  be  seen  that  his 
net  earnings  during  the  year  would  come  to  some  such 
sum  as  the  President  of  the  United  States  gets  for  do 
ing  far  less  work  of  a  much  more  perishable  sort.  If  the 
man  of  letters  were  wholly  a  business  man,  this  is  what 
would  happen;  he  would  make  his  forty  or  fifty  thou 
sand  dollars  a  year,  and  be  able  to  consort  with  bank 
presidents,  and  railroad  officials,  and  rich  tradesmen, 
and  other  flowers  of  our  plutocracy  on  equal  terms. 
But,  unfortunately,  from  a  business  point  of  view,  he 
is  also  an  artist,  and  the  very  qualities  that  enable 
him  to  delight  the  public  disable  him  from  delighting 
it  uninterruptedly.  "No  rose  blooms  right  along," 

4 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

as  the  English  boys  at  Oxford  made  an  American  col 
legian  say  in  a  theme  which  they  imagined  for  him 
in  his  national  parlance;  and  the  man  of  letters,  as 
an  artist,  is  apt  to  have  times  and  seasons  when  he 
cannot  blossom.  Very  often  it  shall  happen  that  his 
mind  will  lie  fallow  between  novels  or  stories  for  weeks 
and  months  at  a  stretch;  when  the  suggestions  of  the 
friendly  editor  shall  fail  to  fruit  in  the  essays  or  arti 
cles  desired;  when  the  muse  shall  altogether  withhold 
herself,  or  shall  respond  only  in  a  feeble  dribble  of 
verse  which  he  might  sell  indeed,  but  which  it  would 
not  be  good  business  for  him  to  put  on  the  market. 
But  supposing  him  to  be  a  very  diligent  and  contin 
uous  worker,  and  so  happy  as  to  have  fallen  on  a  theme 
that  delights  him  and  bears  him  along,  he  may  please 
himself  so  ill  with  the  result  of  his  labors  that  he  can 
do  nothing  less  in  artistic  conscience  than  destroy  a 
day's  work,  a  week's  work,  a  month's  work.  I  know 
one  man  of  letters  who  wrote  to-day  and  tore  up  to 
morrow  for  nearly  a  whole  summer.  But  even  if  part 
of  the  mistaken  work  may  be  saved,  because  it  is  good 
work  out  of  place,  and  not  intrinsically  bad,  the  task 
of  reconstruction  wants  almost  as  much  time  as  the 
production;  and  then,  when  all  seems  done,  comes 
the  anxious  and  endless  process  of  revision.  These 
drawbacks  reduce  the  earning  capacity  of  what  I  may 
call  the  high-cost  man  of  letters  in  such  measure  that 
an  author  whose  name  is  known  everywhere,  and 
whose  reputation  is  commensurate  with  the  bound 
aries  of  his  country,  if  it  does  not  transcend  them, 
shall  have  the  income, 'say,  of  a  rising  young  phy 
sician,  known  to  a  few  people  in  a  subordinate  city. 

In  view  of  this  fact,  so  humiliating  to  an  author  in 
the  presence  of  a  nation  of  business  men  like  ours,  I 
do  not  know  that  I  can  establish  the  man  of  letters  in 
the  popular  esteem  as  very  much  of  a  business  man, 

5 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

after  all.  He  must  still  have  a  low  rank  among  prac 
tical  people ;  and  he  will  be  regarded  by  the  great  mass 
of  Americans  as  perhaps  a  little  off,  a  little  funny,  a 
little  soft!  Perhaps  not;  and  yet  I  would  rather  not 
have  a  consensus  of  public  opinion  on  the  question; 
I  think  I  am  more  comfortable  without  it. 


Ill 

There  is  this  to  be  said  in  defence  of  men  of  letters 
on  the  business  side,  that  literature  is  still  an  infant 
industry  with  us,  and,  so  far  from  having  been  pro 
tected  by  our  laws,  it  was  exposed  for  ninety  years 
after  the  foundation  of  the  republic  to  the  vicious  com 
petition  of  stolen  goods.  It  is  true  that  we  now  have 
the  international  copyright  law  at  last,  and  we  can  at 
least  begin  to  forget  our  shame;  but  literary  property 
has  only  forty-two  years  of  life  under  our  unjust  stat 
utes,  and  if  it  is  attacked  by  robbers  the  law  does  not 
seek  out  the  aggressors  and  punish  them,  as  it  would 
seek  out  and  punish  the  trespassers  upon  any  other 
kind  of  property;  it  leaves  the  aggrieved  owner  to 
bring  suit  against  them,  and  recover  damages,  if 
he  can.  This  may  be  right  enough  in  itself;  but  I 
think,  then,  that  all  property  should  be  defended  by 
civil  suit,  and  should  become  public  after  forty-two 
years  of  private  tenure.  The  Constitution  guaran 
tees  us  all  equality  before  the  law,  but  the  law-makers 
seem  to  have  forgotten  this  in  the  case  of  our  literary 
industry.  So  long  as  this  remains  the  case,  we  can 
not  expect  the  best  business  talent  to  go  into  literature, 
and  the  man  of  letters  must  keep  his  present  low  grade 
among  business  men. 

As  I  have  hinted,  it  is  but  a  little  while  that  he  has 
had  any  standing  at  all.  I  may  say  that  it  is  only  since 

6 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

the  Civil  War  that  literature  has  become  a  business 
with  us.  Before  that  time  we  had  authors,  and  very 
good  ones;  it  is  astonishing  how  good  they  were;  but 
I  do  not  remember  any  of  them  who  lived  by  litera 
ture  except  Edgar  A.  Poe,  perhaps;  and  we  all  know 
how  he  lived;  it  was  largely  upon  loans.  They  were 
either  men  of  fortune,  or  they  were  editors  or  profess 
ors,  with  salaries  or  incomes  apart  from  the  small 
gains  of  their  pens ;  or  they  were  helped  out  with  pub 
lic  offices ;  one  need  not  go  over  their  names  or  classify 
them.  Some  of  them  must  have  made  money  by  their 
books,  but  I  question  whether  any  one  could  have 
lived,  even  very  simply,  upon  the  money  his  books 
brought  him.  No  one  could  do  that  now,  unless  he 
wrote  a  book  that  we  could  not  recognize  as  a  work  of 
literature.  But  many  authors  live  now,  and  live  pret 
tily  enough,  by  the  sale  of  the  serial  publication  of 
their  writings  to  the  magazines.  They  do  not  live 
so  nicely  as  successful  tradespeople,  of  course,  or  as 
men  in  the  other  professions  when  they  begin  to  make 
themselves  names;  the  high  state  of  brokers,  bankers, 
railroad  operators,  and  the  like  is,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  beyond  their  fondest  dreams  of  pecuniary  af 
fluence  and  social  splendor.  Perhaps  they  do  not 
want  the  chief  seats  in  the  synagogue;  it  is  certain 
they  do  not  get  them.  Still,  they  do  very  fairly  well, 
as  things  go;  and  several  have  incomes  that  would 
seem  riches  to  the  great  mass  of  worthy  Americans 
who  work  with  their  hands  for  a  living — when  they 
can  get  the  work.  Their  incomes  are  mainly  from  se 
rial  publication  in  the  different  magazines;  and  the 
prosperity  of  the  magazines  has  given  a  whole  class 
existence  which,  as  a  class,  was  wholly  unknown 
among  us  before  the  Civil  War.  It  is  not  only  the  fa 
mous  or  fully  recognized  authors  who  live  in  this  way, 
but  the  much  larger  number  of  clever  people  who  are 

7 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

as  yet  known  chiefly  to  the  editors,  and  who  may  never 
make  themselves  a  public,  but  who  do  well  a  kind  of 
acceptable  work.  These  are  the  sort  who  do  not  get 
reprinted  from  the  periodicals;  but  the  better  recog 
nized  authors  do  get  reprinted,  and  then  their  serial 
work  in  its  completed  form  appeals  to  the  readers  who 
say  they  do  not  read  serials.  The  multitude  of  these 
is  not  great,  and  if  an  author  rested  his  hopes  upon 
their  favor  he  would  be  a  much  more  imbittered  man 
than  he  now  generally  is.  But  he  understands  perfectly 
well  that  his  reward  is  in  the  serial  and  not  in  the  book ; 
the  return  from  that  he  may  count  as  so  much  money 
found  in  the  road — a  few  hundreds,  a  very  few  thou 
sands,  at  the  most,  unless  he  is  the  author  of  an  his 
torical  romance. 

IV 

I  doubt,  indeed,  whether  the  earnings  of  literary 
men  are  absolutely  as  great  as  they  were  earlier  in  the 
century,  in  any  of  the  English-speaking  countries; 
relatively  they  are  nothing  like  as  great.  Scott  had 
forty  thousand  dollars  for  Woodstock,  which  was  not 
a  very  large  novel,  and  was  by  no  means  one  of  his 
best;  and  forty  thousand  dollars  then  had  at  least  the 
purchasing  power  of  sixty  thousand  now.  Moore  had 
three  thousand  guineas  for  Lalla  Rookh,  but  what 
publisher  would  be  rash  enough  to  pay  fifteen  thou 
sand  dollars  for  the  masterpiece  of  a  minor  poet  now? 
The  book,  except  in  very  rare  instances,  makes  noth 
ing  like  the  return  to  the  author  that  the  magazine 
makes,  and  there  are  few  leading  authors  who  find 
their  account  in  that  form  of  publication.  Those  who 
do,  those  who  sell  the  most  widely  in  book  form, 
are  often  not  at  all  desired  by  editors;  with  difficulty 
they  get  a  serial  accepted  by  any  principal  maga- 

8 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

zine.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  authors  whose 
books,  compared  with  those  of  the  popular  favorites, 
do  not  sell,  and  yet  they  are  eagerly  sought  for  by 
editors;  they  are  paid  the  highest  prices,  and  nothing 
that  they  offer  is  refused.  These  are  literary  artists; 
and  it  ought  to  be  plain  from  what  I  am  saying  that 
in  belles-lettres,  at  least,  most  of  the  best  literature 
now  first  sees  the  light  in  the  magazines,  and  most 
of  the  second-best  appears  first  in  book  form.  The 
old-fashioned  people  who  flatter  themselves  upon  their 
distinction  in  not  reading  magazine  fiction  or  maga 
zine  poetry  make  a  great  mistake,  and  simply  class 
themselves  with  the  public  whose  taste  is  so  crude  that 
they  cannot  enjoy  the  best.  Of  course,  this  is  true 
mainly,  if  not  merely,  of  belles-lettres ;  history,  science, 
politics,  metaphysics,  in  spite  of  the  many  excellent 
articles  and  papers  in  these  sorts  upon  what  used  to 
be  called  various  emergent  occasions,  are  still  to  be 
found  at  their  best  in  books.  The  most  monumental 
example  of  literature,  at  once  light  and  good,  which 
has  first  reached  the  public  in  book  form  is  in  the  dif 
ferent  publications  of  Mark  Twain;  but  Mr.  Clemens 
has  of  late  turned  to  the  magazines  too,  and  now  takes 
their  mint-mark  before  he  passes  into  general  circu 
lation.  All  this  may  change  again,  but  at  present 
the  magazines — we  have  no  longer  any  reviews — 
form  the  most  direct  approach  to  that  part  of  our  read 
ing  public  which  likes  the  highest  things  in  literary 
art.  Their  readers,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  quality 
of  the  literature  they  get,  are  more  refined  than  the 
book  readers  in  our  community;  and  their  taste  has 
no  doubt  been  cultivated  by  that  of  the  disciplined 
and  experienced  editors.  So  far  as  I  have  known 
these,  they  are  men  of  aesthetic  conscience  and  of  gen 
erous  sympathy.  They  have  their  preferences  in 
the  different  kinds,  and  they  have  their  theory  of  what 

9 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

kind  will  be  most  acceptable  to  their  readers ;  but  they 
exercise  their  selective  function  with  the  wish  to  give 
them  the  best  things  they  can.  I  do  not  know  one  of 
them  —  and  it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  know 
them  nearly  all  —  who  would  print  a  wholly  inferior 
thing  for  the  sake  of  an  inferior  class  of  readers, 
though  they  may  sometimes  decline  a  good  thing 
because  for  one  reason  or  another  they  believe  it 
would  not  be  liked.  Still,  even  this  does  not  often 
happen ;  they  would  rather  chance  the  good  thing  they 
doubted  of  than  underrate  their  readers'  judgment. 

The  young  author  who  wins  recognition  in  a  first- 
class  magazine  has  achieved  a  double  success,  first, 
with  the  editor,  and  then  with  the  best  reading  pub 
lic.  Many  factitious  and  fallacious  literary  reputa 
tions  have  been  made  through  books,  but  very  few 
have  been  made  through  the  magazines,  which  are 
not  only  the  best  means  of  living,  but  of  outliving, 
with  the  author ;  they  are  both  bread  and  fame  to  him. 
If  I  insist  a  little  upon  the  high  office  which  this  mod 
ern  form  of  publication  fulfils  in  the  literary  world,  it 
is  because  I  am  impatient  of  the  antiquated  and  igno 
rant  prejudice  which  classes  the  magazines  as  ephem 
eral.  They  are  ephemeral  in  form,  but  in  substance 
they  are  not  ephemeral,  and  what  is  best  in  them 
awaits  its  resurrection  in  the  book,  which,  as  the 
first  form,  is  so  often  a  lasting  death.  An  interest 
ing  proof  of  the  value  of  the  magazine  to  literature 
is  the  fact  that  a  good  novel  will  often  have  wider 
acceptance  as  a  book  from  having  been  a  magazine 
serial. 


Under  the  regime  of  the  great  literary  periodicals 
the  prosperity  of  literary  men  would  be  much  greater 

10 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

than  it  actually  is  if  the  magazines  were  altogether 
literary.  But  they  are  not,  and  this  is  one  reason 
why  literature  is  still  the  hungriest  of  the  professions. 
Two-thirds  of  the  magazines  are  made  up  of  material 
which,  however  excellent,  is  without  literary  quality. 
Very  probably  this  is  because  even  the  highest  class  of 
readers,  who  are  the  magazine  readers,  have  small  love 
of  pure  literature,  which  seems  to  have  been  growing 
less  and  less  in  all  classes.  I  say  seems,  because  there 
are  really  no  means  of  ascertaining  the  fact,  and  it 
may  be  that  the  editors  are  mistaken  in  making  their 
periodicals  two-thirds  popular  science,  politics,  econom 
ics,  and  the  timely  topics  which  I  will  call  contem- 
poranics.  But,  however  that  may  be,  their  efforts  in 
this  direction  have  narrowed  the  field  of  literary  in 
dustry,  and  darkened  the  hope  of  literary  prosperity 
kindled  by  the  unexampled  prosperity  of  their  period 
icals.  They  pay  very  well  indeed  for  literature;  they 
pay  from  five  or  six  dollars  a  thousand  words  for  the 
work  of  the  unknown  writer  to  a  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  a  thousand  words  for  that  of  the  most  famous, 
or  the  most  popular,  if  there  is  a  difference  between 
fame  and  popularity;  but  they  do  not,  altogether, 
want  enough  literature  to  justify  the  best  business 
talent  in  devoting  itself  to  belles-lettres,  to  fiction,  or 
poetry,  or  humorous  sketches  of  travel,  or  light  es 
says;  business  talent  can  do  far  better  in  dry  goods, 
groceries,  drugs,  stocks,  real  estate,  railroads,  and 
the  like.  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  danger  of  a  ruin 
ous  competition  from  it  in  the  field  which,  though 
narrow,  seems  so  rich  to  us  poor  fellows,  whose  busi 
ness  talent  is  small,  at  the  best. 

The  most  of  the  material  contributed  to  the  maga 
zines  is  the  subject  of  agreement  between  the  editor 
and  the  author;  it  is  either  suggested  by  the  author 
or  is  the  fruit  of  some  suggestion  from  the  editor;  in 

II 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

any  case  the  price  is  stipulated  beforehand,  and  it  is 
no  longer  the  custom  for  a  well-known  contributor 
to  leave  the  payment  to  the  justice  or  the  generosity 
of  the  publisher;  that  was  never  a  fair  thing  to  either, 
nor  ever  a  wise  thing.  Usually,  the  price  is  so  much 
a  thousand  words,  a  truly  odious  method  of  computing 
literary  value,  and  one  well  calculated  to  make  the 
author  feel  keenly  the  hatefulness  of  selling  his  art 
at  all.  It  is  as  if  a  painter  sold  his  picture  at  so  much 
a  square  inch,  or  a  sculptor  bargained  away  a  group 
of  statuary  by  the  pound.  But  it  is  a  custom  that  you 
cannot  always  successfully  quarrel  with,  and  most 
writers  gladly  consent  to  it,  if  only  the  price  a  thousand 
words  is  large  enough.  The  sale  to  the  editor  means 
the  sale  of  the  serial  rights  only,  but  if  the  publisher 
of  the  magazine  is  also  a  publisher  of  books,  the  re- 
publication  of  the  material  is  supposed  to  be  his  right, 
unless  there  is  an  understanding  to  the  contrary;  the 
terms  for  this  are  another  affair.  Formerly  some 
thing  more  could  be  got  for  the  author  by  the  simul 
taneous  appearance  of  his  work  in  an  English  maga 
zine;  but  now  the  great  American  magazines,  which 
pay  far  higher  prices  than  any  others  in  the  world, 
have  a  circulation  in  England  so  much  exceeding 
that  of  any  English  periodical  that  the  simultane 
ous  publication  can  no  longer  be  arranged  for  from 
this  side,  though  I  believe  it  is  still  done  here  from  the 
other  side. 

VI 

I  think  this  is  the  case  of  authorship  as  it  now  stands 
with  regard  to  the  magazines.  I  am  not  sure  that  the 
case  is  in  every  way  improved  for  young  authors.  The 
magazines  all  maintain  a  staff  for  the  careful  exami 
nation  of  manuscripts,  but  as  most  of  the  material 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

they  print  has  been  engaged,  the  number  of  volunteer 
contributions  that  they  can  use  is  very  small;  one  of 
the  greatest  of  them,  I  know,  does  not  use  fifty  in  the 
course  of  a  year.  The  new  writer,  then,  must  be  very 
good  to  be  accepted,  and  when  accepted  he  may  wait 
long  before  he  is  printed.  The  pressure  is  so  great  in 
these  avenues  to  the  public  favor  that  one,  two,  three 
years,  are  no  uncommon  periods  of  delay.  If  the  young 
writer  has  not  the  patience  for  this,  or  has  a  soul  above 
cooling  his  heels  in  the  courts  of  fame,  or  must  do  his 
best  to  earn  something  at  once,  the  book  is  his  im 
mediate  hope.  How  slight  a  hope  the  book  is  I  have 
tried  to  hint  already,  but  if  a  book  is  vulgar  enough 
in  sentiment,  and  crude  enough  in  taste,  and  flashy 
enough  in  incident,  or,  better  or  worse  still,  if  it  is  a 
bit  hot  in  the  mouth,  and  promises  impropriety  if  not 
indecency,  there  is  a  very  fair  chance  of  its  success; 
I  do  not  mean  success  with  a  self-respecting  publisher, 
but  with  the  public,  which  does  not  personally  put  its 
name  to  it,  and  is  not  openly  smirched  by  it.  I  will 
not  talk  of  that  kind  of  book,  however,  but  of  the  book 
which  the  young  author  has  written  out  of  an  un 
spoiled  heart  and  an  untainted  mind,  such  as  most 
young  men  and  women  write;  and  I  will  suppose  that 
it  has  found  a  publisher.  It  is  human  nature,  as  com 
petition  has  deformed  human  nature,  for  the  pub 
lisher  to  wish  the  author  to  take  all  the  risks,  and  he 
possibly  proposes  that  the  author  shall  publish  it  at 
his  own  expense,  and  let  him  have  a  percentage  of  the 
retail  price  for  managing  it.  If  not  that,  he  proposes 
that  the  author  shall  pay  for  the  stereotype  plates, 
and  take  fifteen  per  cent,  of  the  price  of  the  book;  or 
if  this  will  not  go,  if  the  author  cannot,  rather  than 
will  not,  do  it  (he  is  commonly  only  too  glad  to  do  any 
thing  he  can),  then  the  publisher  offers  him  ten  per 
cent,  of  the  retail  price  after  the  first  thousand  copies 

13 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

have  been  sold.  But  if  he  fully  believes  in  the  book, 
he  will  give  ten  per  cent,  from  the  first  copy  sold,  and 
pay  all  the  costs  of  publication  himself.  The  book 
is  to  be  retailed  for  a  dollar  and  a  half,  and  the  pub 
lisher  is  not  displeased  with  a  new  book  that  sells  fif 
teen  hundred  copies.  Whether  the  author  has  as 
much  reason  to  be  pleased  is  a  question,  but  if  the  book 
does  not  sell  more  he  has  only  himself  to  blame,  and 
had  better  pocket  in  silence  the  two  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  dollars  he  gets  for  it,  and  bless  his  publisher, 
and  try  to  find  work  somewhere  at  five  dollars  a  week. 
The  publisher  has  not  made  any  more,  if  quite  as  much 
as  the  author,  and  until  a  book  has  sold  two  thousand 
copies  the  division  is  fair  enough.  After  that,  the 
heavier  expenses  of  manufacturing  have  been  de 
frayed  and  the  book  goes  on  advertising  itself;  there 
is  merely  the  cost  of  paper,  printing,  binding,  and 
marketing  to  be  met,  and  the  arrangement  becomes 
fairer  and  fairer  for  the  publisher.  The  author  has 
no  right  to  complain  of  this,  in  the  case  of  his  first 
book,  which  he  is  only  too  grateful  to  get  accepted  at 
all.  If  it  succeeds,  he  has  himself  to  blame  for  making 
the  same  arrangement  for  his  second  or  third ;  it  is  his 
fault,  or  else  it  is  his  necessity,  which  is  practically 
the  same  thing.  It  will  be  business  for  the  publisher 
to  take  advantage  of  his  necessity  quite  the  same  as 
if  it  were  his  fault ;  but  I  do  not  say  that  he  will  always 
do  so ;  I  believe  he  will  very  often  not  do  so. 

At  one  time  there  seemed  a  probability  of  the  en 
largement  of  the  author's  gains  by  subscription  pub 
lication,  and  one  v^ry  well-known  American  author 
prospered  fabulously  in  that  way.  The  percentage 
offered  by  the  subscription  houses  was  only  about 
half  as  much  as  that  paid  by  the  trade,  but  the  sales 
were  so  much  greater  that  the  author  could  very  well 
afford  to  take  it.  Where  the  book-dealer  sold  ten,  the 

14 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

book-agent  sold  a  hundred ;  or  at  least  he  did  so  in  the 
case  of  Mark  Twain's  books;  and  we  all  thought  it 
reasonable  he  could  do  so  with  ours.  Such  of  us  as 
made  experiment  of  him,  however,  found  the  facts 
illogical.  No  book  of  literary  quality  was  made  to 
go  by  subscription  except  Mr.  Clemens 's  books,  and 
I  think  these  went  because  the  subscription  public 
never  knew  what  good  literature  they  were.  This  sort 
of  readers,  or  buyers,  were  so  used  to  getting  some 
thing  worthless  for  their  money  that  they  would  not 
spend  it  for  artistic  fiction,  or,  indeed,  for  any  fiction 
at  all  except  Mr.  Clemens 's,  which  they  probably  sup 
posed  bad.  Some  good  books  of  travel  had  a  measur 
able  success  through  the  book-agents,  but  not  at  all  the 
success  that  had  been  hoped  for ;  and  I  believe  now  the 
subscription  trade  again  publishes  only  compilations, 
or  such  works  as  owe  more  to  the  skill  of  the  editor 
than  the  art  of  the  writer.  Mr.  Clemens  himself  no 
longer  offers  his  books  to  the  public  in  that  way. 

It  is  not  common,  I  think,  in  this  country,  to  pub 
lish  on  the  half-profits  system,  but  it  is  very  common 
in  England,  where,  owing  probably  to  the  moisture 
in  the  air,  which  lends  a  fairy  outline  to  every  pros 
pect,  it  seems  to  be  peculiarly  alluring.  One  of  my 
own  early  books  was  published  there  on  these  terms, 
which  I  accepted  with  the  insensate  joy  of  the  young 
author  in  getting  any  terms  from  a  publisher.  The 
book  sold,  sold  every  copy  of  the  small  first  edition, 
and  in  due  time  the  publisher's  statement  came.  I  did 
not  think  my  half  of  the  profits  was  very  great,  but  it 
seemed  a  fair  division  after  every  imaginable  cost  had 
been  charged  up  against  my  poor  book,  and  that  frail 
venture  had  been  made  to  pay  the  expenses  of  com 
position,  corrections,  paper,  printing,  binding,  adver 
tising,  and  editorial  copies.  The  wonder  ought  to 
have  been  that  there  was  anything  at  all  coming  to 

15 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

me,  but  I  was  young  and  greedy  then,  and  I  really 
thought  there  ought  to  have  been  more.  I  was  dis 
appointed,  but  I  made  the  best  of  it,  of  course,  and 
took  the  account  to  the  junior  partner  of  the  house 
which  employed  me,  and  said  that  I  should  like  to 
draw  on  him  for  the  sum  due  me  from  the  London 
publishers.  He  said,  Certainly;  but  after  a  glance 
at  the  account  he  smiled  and  said  he  supposed  I  knew 
how  much  the  sum  was?  I  answered,  Yes;  it  was 
eleven  pounds  nine  shillings,  was  not  it?  But  I  owned 
at  the  same  time  that  I  never  was  good  at  figures,  and 
that  I  found  English  money  peculiarly  baffling.  He 
laughed  now,  and  said,  It  was  eleven  shillings  and 
ninepence.  In  fact,  after  all  those  charges  for  com 
position,  corrections,  paper,  printing,  binding,  adver 
tising,  and  editorial  copies,  there  was  a  most  ingen 
ious  and  wholly  surprising  charge  of  ten  per  cent, 
commission  on  sales,  which  reduced  my  half  from 
pounds  to  shillings,  and  handsomely  increased  the 
publisher's  half  in  proportion.  I  do  not  now  dispute 
the  justice  of  the  charge.  It  was  not  the  fault  of  the 
half-profits  system ;  it  was  the  fault  of  the  glad  young 
author  who  did  not  distinctly  inform  himself  of  its 
mysterious  nature  in  agreeing  to  it,  and  had  only 
to  reproach  himself  if  he  was  finally  disappointed. 

But  there  is  always  something  disappointing  in 
the  accounts  of  publishers,  which  I  fancy  is  because 
authors  are  strangely  constituted,  rather  than  be 
cause  publishers  are  so.  I  will  confess  that  I  have 
such  inordinate  expectations  of  the  sale  of  my  books, 
which  I  hope  I  think  modestly  of,  that  the  sales  re 
ported  to  me  never  seem  great  enough.  The  copy 
right  due  me,  no  matter  how  handsome  it  is,  appears 
deplorably  mean,  and  I  feel  impoverished  for  several 
days  after  I  get  it.  But,  then,  I  ought  to  add  that  my 
balance  in  the  bank  is  always  much  less  than  I  have 

16 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

supposed  it  to  be,  and  my  own  checks,  when  they  come 
back  to  me,  have  the  air  of  having  been  in  a  conspir 
acy  to  betray  me. 

No,  we  literary  men  must  learn,  no  matter  how  we 
boast  ourselves  in  business,  that  the  distress  we  feel 
from  our  publisher's  accounts  is  simply  idiopathic; 
and  I  for  one  wish  to  bear  my  witness  to  the  constant 
good  faith  and  uprightness  of  publishers.     It  is  sup 
posed   that   because  they  have  the  affair  altogether 
in  their  hands  they  are  apt  to  take  advantage  in  it; 
but  this  does  not  follow,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  they 
have  the  affair  no  more  in  their  own  hands  than  any 
other  business  man  you  have  an  open  account  with. 
There  is  nothing  to  prevent  you  from  looking  at  their  i 
books,   except    your    own   innermost   belief   and  fear/ 
that  their   books   are   correct,  and   that   your   litera-/ 
ture  has  brought  you  so  little  because  it  has  sold  so/ 
little. 

The  author  is  not  to  blame  for  his  superficial  de 
lusion  to  the  contrary,  especially  if  he  has  written  a 
book  that  has  set  every  one  talking,  because  it  is  of  a 
vital  interest.  It  may  be  of  a  vital  interest,  without 
being  at  all  the  kind  of  book  people  want  to  buy;  it 
may  be  the  kind  of  book  that  they  are  content  to 
know  at  second  hand ;  there  are  such  fatal  books ; 
but  hearing  so  much,  and  reading  so  much  about  it, 
the  author  cannot  help  hoping  that  it  has  sold  much 
more  than  the  publisher  says.  The  publisher  is  un 
doubtedly  honest,  however,  and  the  author  had  bet 
ter  put  away  the  comforting  question  of  his  integ 
rity. 

The  English  writers  seem  largely  to  suspect  their 
publishers;  but  I  believe  that  American  authors,  when 
not  flown  with  flattering  reviews,  as  largely  trust 
theirs.  Of  course  there  are  rogues  in  every  walk  of 
life.  I  will  not  say  that  I  ever  personally  met  them 

17 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

in  the  flowery  paths  of  literature,  but  I  have  heard  of 
other  people  meeting  them  there,  just  as  I  have  heard 
of  people  seeing  ghosts,  and  I  have  to  believe  in  both 
the  rogues  and  the  ghosts,  without  the  witness  of  my 
own  senses.  I  suppose,  upon  such  grounds  mainly, 
that  there  are  wicked  publishers,  but,  in  the  case  of 
our  books  that  do  not  sell,  I  am  afraid  that  it  is  the 
graceless  and  inappreciative  public  which  is  far  more 
to  blame  than  the  wickedest  of  the  publishers.  It  is 
true  that  publishers  will  drive  a  hard  bargain  when 
they  can,  or  when  they  must;  but  there  is  nothing  to 
hinder  an  author  from  driving  a  hard  bargain,  too, 
when  he  can,  or  when  he  must;  and  it  is  to  be  said  of 
the  publisher  that  he  is  always  more  willing  to  abide 
by  the  bargain  when  it  is  made  than  the  author  is; 
perhaps  because  he  has  the  best  of  it.  But  he  has 
not  always  the  best  of  it;  I  have  known  publishers 
too  generous  to  take  advantage  of  the  innocence  of 
authors;  and  I  fancy  that  if  publishers  had  to  do  with 
any  race  less  diffident  than  authors,  they  would  have 
won  a  repute  for  unselfishness  that  they  do  not  now 
enjoy.  It  is  certain  that  in  the  long  period  when  we 
flew  the  black  flag  of  piracy  there  were  many  among 
our  corsairs  on  the  high  seas  of  literature  who  paid 
a  fair  price  for  the  stranger  craft  they  seized;  still 
oftener  they  removed  the  cargo  and  released  their 
capture  with  several  weeks'  provision;  and  although 
there  was  undoubtedly  a  good  deal  of  actual  throat- 
cutting  and  scuttling,  still  I  feel  sure  that  there  was 
less  of  it  than  there  would  have  been  in  any  other  line 
of  business  released  to  the  unrestricted  plunder  of  the 
neighbor.  There  was  for  a  long  time  even  a  comity 
among  these  amiable  buccaneers,  who  agreed  not  to 
interfere  with  each  other,  and  so  were  enabled  to  pay 
over  to  their  victims  some  portion  of  the  profit  from 
their  stohn  goods.  Of  all  business  men  publishers 

18 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

are  probably  the  most  faithful  and  honorable,  and 
are  only  surpassed  in  virtue  when  men  of  letters  turn 
business  men. 

VII 

Publishers  have  their  little  theories,  their  little  super 
stitions,  and  their  blind  faith  in  the  great  god  Chance 
which  we  all  worship.  These  things  lead  them  into 
temptation  and  adversity,  but  they  seem  to  do  fairly 
well  as  business  men,  even  in  their  own  behalf.  They 
do  not  make  above  the  usual  ninety-five  per  cent,  of 
failures,  and  more  publishers  than  authors  get  rich. 

Some  theories  or  superstitions  publishers  and  au 
thors  share  together.  One  of  these  is  that  it  is  best 
to  keep  your  books  all  in  the  hands  of  one  publisher 
if  you  can,  because  then  he  can  give  them  more  atten 
tion  and  sell  more  of  them.  But  my  own  experience 
is  that  when  my  books  were  in  the  hands  of  three  pub 
lishers  they  sold  quite  as  well  as  when  one  had  them; 
and  a  fellow -author  whom  I  approached  in  question 
of  this  venerable  belief  laughed  at  it.  This  bold 
heretic  held  that  it  was  best  to  give  each  new  book  to 
a  new  publisher,  for  then  the  fresh  man  put  all  his 
energies  into  pushing  it;  but  if  you  had  them  all  to 
gether,  the  publisher  rested  in  a  vain  security  that 
one  book  would  sell  another,  and  that  the  fresh  vent 
ure  would  revive  the  public  interest  in  the  stale  ones. 
I  never  knew  this  to  happen,  and  I  must  class  it  with 
the  superstitions  of  the  trade.  It  may  be  so  in  other 
and  more  constant  countries,  but  in  our  fickle  repub 
lic  each  last  book  has  to  fight  its  own  way  to  public 
favor,  much  as  if  it  had  no  sort  of  literary  lineage. 
Of  course  this  is  stating  it  rather  largely,  and  the  truth 
will  be  found  inside  rather  than  outside  of  my  state 
ment;  but  there  is  at  least  truth  enough  in  it  to  give 

19 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

the  young  author  pause.  While  one  is  preparing  to 
sell  his  basket  of  glass,  he  may  as  well  ask  himself 
whether  it  is  better  to  part  with  all  to  one  dealer  or 
not ;  and  if  he  kicks  it  over,  in  spurning  the  imaginary 
customer  who  asks  the  favor  of  taking  the  entire  stock, 
that  will  be  his  fault,  and  not  the  fault  of  the  customer. 
However,  the  most  important  question  of  all  with 
the  man  of  letters  as  a  man  of  business  is  what  kind 
of  book  will  sell  the  best  of  itself,  because,  at  the  end 
of  the  ends,  a  book  sells  itself  or  does  not  sell  at  all; 
kissing,  after  long  ages  of  reasoning  and  a  great  deal 
of  culture,  still  goes  by  favor,  and  though  innumer 
able  generations  of  horses  have  been  led  to  the  water, 
not  one  horse  has  yet  been  made  to  drink.  With  the 
best,  or  the  worst,  will  in  the  world,  no  publisher  can 
force  a  book  into  acceptance.  Advertising  will  not 
avail,  and  reviewing  is  notoriously  futile.  If  the  book 
does  not  strike  the  popular  fancy,  or  deal  with  some 
universal  interest,  which  need  by  no  means  be  a  pro 
found  or  important  one,  the  drums  and  the  cymbals 
shall  be  beaten  in  vain.  The  book  may  be  one  of  the 
best  and  wisest  books  in  the  world,  but  if  it  has  not 
this  sort  of  appeal  in  it  the  readers  of  it,  and,  worse 
yet,  the  purchasers,  will  remain  few,  though  fit.  The 
secret  of  this,  like  most  other  secrets  of  a  rather  ridicu 
lous  world,  is  in  the  awful  keeping  of  fate,  and  we  can 
only  hope  to  surprise  it  by  some  lucky  chance.  To 
plan  a  surprise  of  it,  to  aim  a  book  at  the  public  favor, 
is  the  most  hopeless  of  all  endeavors,  as  it  is  one  of  the 
unworthiest;  and  I  can,  neither  as  a  man  of  letters 
nor  as  a  man  of  business,  counsel  the  young  author 
to  do  it.  The  best  that  you  can  do  is  to  write  the  book 
that  it  gives  you  the  most  pleasure  to  write,  to  put  as 
much  heart  and  soul  as  you  have  about  you  into  it, 
and  then  hope  as  hard  as  you  can  to  reach  the  heart 
and  soul  of  the  great  multitude  of  your  fellow-men. 

20 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

That,  and  that  alone,  is  good  business  for  a  man  of 
letters. 

The  man  of  letters  must  make  up  his  mind  that  in 
the  United  States  the  fate  of  a  book  is  in  the  hands  of 
the  women.  It  is  the  women  with  us  who  have  the 
most  leisure,  and  they  read  the  most  books.  They 
are  far  better  educated,  for  the  most  part,  than  our 
men,  and  their  tastes,  if  not  their  minds,  are  more 
cultivated.  Our  men  read  the  newspapers,  but  our 
women  read  the  books;  the  more  refined  among  them 
read  the  magazines.  If  they  do  not  always  know 
what  is  good,  they  do  know  what  pleases  them,  and 
it  is  useless  to  quarrel  with  their  decisions,  for  there 
is  no  appeal  from  them.  To  go  from  them  to  the  men 
would  be  going  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  court,  which 
would  be  honestly  surprised  and  bewildered,  if  the 
thing  were  possible.  As  I  say,  the  author  of  light 
literature,  and  often  the  author  of  solid  literature, 
must  resign  himself  to  obscurity  unless  the  ladies 
choose  to  recognize  him.  Yet  it  would  be  impossible 
to  forecast  their  favor  for  this  kind  or  that.  Who 
could  prophesy  it  for  another,  who  guess  it  for  himself? 
We  must  strive  blindly  for  it,  and  hope  somehow  that 
our  best  will  also  be  our  prettiest ;  but  we  must  remem 
ber  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  not  the  ladies'  man  who 
is  the  favorite  of  the  ladies. 

There  are,  of  course,  a  few,  a  very  few,  of  our  great 
est  authors  who  have  striven  forward  to  the  first  place 
in  our  Valhalla  without  the  help  of  the  largest  read 
ing-class  among  us;  but  I  should  say  that  these  were 
chiefly  the  humorists,  for  whom  women  are  said  no 
where  to  have  any  warm  liking,  and  who  have  gen 
erally  with  us  come  up  through  the  newspapers,  and 
have  never  lost  the  favor  of  the  newspaper  readers. 
They  have  become  literary  men,  as  it  were,  without 
the  newspaper  readers'  knowing  it;  but  those  who 

21 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

have  approached  literature  from  another  direction 
have  won  fame  in  it  chiefly  by  grace  of  the  women, 
who  first  read  them,  and  then  made  their  husbands 
and  fathers  read  them.  Perhaps,  then,  and  as  a  mat 
ter  of  business,  it  would  be  well  for  a  serious  author, 
when  he  finds  that  he  is  not  pleasing  the  women,  and 
probably  never  will  please  them,  to  turn  humorous 
author,  and  aim  at  the  countenance  of  the  men.  Ex 
cept  as  a  humorist  he  certainly  never  will  get  it,  for 
your  American,  when  he  is  not  making  money,  or  try 
ing  to  do  it,  is  making  a  joke,  or  trying  to  do  it. 


VIII 

I  hope  that  I  have  not  been  hinting  that  the  author 
who  approaches  literature  through  journalism  is  not 
as  fine  and  high  a  literary  man  as  the  author  who 
comes  directly  to  it,  or  through  some  other  avenue; 
I  have  not  the  least  notion  of  condemning  myself  by 
any  such  judgment.  But  I  think  it  is  pretty  certain 
that  fewer  and  fewer  authors  are  turning  from  jour 
nalism  to  literature,  though  the  entente  cordiale  be 
tween  the  two  professions  seems  as  great  as  ever.  I 
fancy,  though  I  may  be  as  mistaken  in  this  as  I  am 
in  a  good  many  other  things,  that  most  journalists 
would  have  been  literary  men  if  they  could,  at  the  be 
ginning,  and  that  the  kindness  they  almost  always 
show  to  young  authors  is  an  effect  of  the  self-pity  they 
feel  for  their  own  thwarted  wish  to  be  authors.  When 
an  author  is  once  warm  in  the  saddle,  and  is  riding 
his  winged  horse  to  glory,  the  case  is  different:  they 
have  then  often  no  sentiment  about  him ;  he  is  no  longer 
the  image  of  their  own  young  aspiration,  and  they 
would  willingly  see  Pegasus  buck  under  him,  or  have 
him  otherwise  brought  to  grief  and  shame.  They 

22 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

are  apt  to  gird  at  him  for  his  unhallowed  gains,  and 
they  would  be  quite  right  in  this  if  they  proposed  any 
way  for  him  to  live  without  them;  as  I  have  allowed 
at  the  outset,  the  gains  are  unhallowed.  Apparently 
it  is  unseemly  for  two  or  three  authors  to  be  making 
half  as  much  by  their  pens  as  popular  ministers  often 
receive  in  salary ;  the  public  is  used  to  the  pecuniary 
prosperity  of  some  of  the  clergy,  and  at  least  sees  noth 
ing  droll  in  it;  but  the  paragrapher  can  always  get  a 
smile  out  of  his  readers  at  the  gross  disparity  between 
the  ten  thousand  dollars  Jones  gets  for  his  novel  and 
the  five  pounds  Milton  got  for  his  epic.  I  have  al 
ways  thought  Milton  was  paid  too  little,  but  I  will 
own  that  he  ought  not  to  have  been  paid  at  all,  if  it 
comes  to  that.  Again  I  say  that  no  man  ought  to 
live  by  any  art;  it  is  a  shame  to  the  art  if  not  to  the 
artist;  but  as  yet  there  is  no  means  of  the  artist's  liv 
ing  otherwise  and  continuing  an  artist. 

The  literary  man  has  certainly  no  complaint  to 
make  of  the  newspaper  man,  generally  speaking.  I 
have  often  thought  with  amazement  of  the  kindness 
shown  by  the  press  to  our  whole  unworthy  craft,  and 
of  the  help  so  lavishly  and  freely  given  to  rising  and 
even  risen  authors.  To  put  it  coarsely,  brutally,  I 
do  not  suppose  that  any  other  business  receives  so 
much  gratuitous  advertising,  except  the  theatre.  It 
is  enormous,  the  space  given  in  the  newspapers  to 
literary  notes,  literary  announcements,  reviews,  inter 
views,  personal  paragraphs,  biographies,  and  all  the 
rest,  not  to  mention  the  vigorous  and  incisive  attacks 
made  from  time  to  time  upon  different  authors  for 
their  opinions  of  romanticism,  realism,  capitalism, 
socialism,  Catholicism,  and  Sandemanianism.  I  have 
sometimes  doubted  whether  the  public  cared  for  so 
much  of  it  all  as  the  editors  gave  them,  but  I  have  al 
ways  said  this  under  my  breath,  and  I  have  thankfully 

23 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

taken  my  share  of  the  common  bounty.  A  curious 
fact,  however,  is  that  this  vast  newspaper  publicity 
seems  to  have  very  little  to  do  with  an  author's  popu 
larity,  though  ever  so  much  with  his  notoriety.  Some 
of  those  strange  subterranean  fellows  who  never  come 
to  the  surface  in  the  newspapers,  except  for  a  con 
temptuous  paragraph  at  long  intervals,  outsell  the 
famousest  of  the  celebrities,  and  secretly  have  their 
horses  and  yachts  and  country  seats,  while  immodest 
merit  is  left  to  get  about  on  foot  and  look  up  summer 
board  at  the  cheaper  hotels.  That  is  probably  right, 
or  it  would  not  happen;  it  seems  to  be  in  the  general 
scheme,  like  millionairism  and  pauperism;  but  it  be 
comes  a  question,  then,  whether  the  newspapers,  with 
all  their  friendship  for  literature,  and  their  actual 
generosity  to  literary  men,  can  really  help  one  much 
to  fortune,  however  much  they  help  one  to  fame.  Such 
a  question  is  almost  too  dreadful,  and,  though  I  have 
asked  it,  I  will  not  attempt  to  answer  it.  I  would 
much  rather  consider  the  question  whether,  if  the 
newspapers  can  make  an  author,  they  can  also  un 
make  him,  and  I  feel  pretty  safe  in  saying  that  I  do  not 
think  they  can.  The  Afreet,  once  out  of  the  bottle,  can 
never  be  coaxed  back  or  cudgelled  back;  and  the  au 
thor  whom  the  newspapers  have  made  cannot  be  un 
made  by  the  newspapers.  Perhaps  he  could  if  they 
would  let  him  alone;  but  the  art  of  letting  alone  the 
creature  of  your  favor,  when  he  has  forfeited  your 
favor,  is  yet  in  its  infancy  with  the  newspapers.  They 
consign  him  to  oblivion  with  a  rumor  that  fills  the 
land,  and  they  keep  visiting  him  there  with  an  up 
roar  which  attracts  more  and  more  notice  to  him.  An 
author  who  has  long  enjoyed  their  favor  suddenly 
and  rather  mysteriously  loses  it,  through  his  opin 
ions  on  certain  matters  of  literary  taste,  say.  For 
the  space  of  five  or  six  years  he  is  denounced  with  a 

24 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

unanimity  and  an  incisive  vigor  that  ought  to  con 
vince  him  there  is  something  wrong.  If  he  thinks 
it  is  his  censors,  he  clings  to  his  opinions  with  an 
abiding  constancy,  while  ridicule,  obloquy,  carica 
ture,  burlesque,  critical  refutation,  and  personal  detrac 
tion  follow  unsparingly  upon  every  expression,  for 
instance,  of  his  belief  that  romantic  fiction  is  the 
highest  form  of  fiction,  and  that  the  base,  sordid, 
photographic,  commonplace  school  of  Tolstoy,  Tour- 
gue"nief,  Zola,  Hardy,  and  James  is  unworthy  a  mo 
ment's  comparison  with  the  school  of  Rider  Haggard. 
All  this  ought  certainly  to  unmake  the  author  in  ques 
tion,  but  this  is  not  really  the  effect.  Slowly  but  sure 
ly  the  clamor  dies  away,  and  the  author,  without  re 
linquishing  one  of  his  wicked  opinions,  or  in  any  wise 
showing  himself  repentant, remains  apparently  whole; 
and  he  even  returns  in  a  measure  to  the  old  kindness — 
not  indeed  to  the  earlier  day  of  perfectly  smooth  things, 
but  certainly  to  as  much  of  it  as  he  merits. 

I  would  not  have  the  young  author,  from  this  im 
aginary  case,  believe  that  it  is  well  either  to  court  or 
to  defy  the  good  opinion  of  the  press.  In  fact,  it  will 
not  only  be  better  taste,  but  it  will  be  better  business,  / 
for  him  to  keep  it  altogether  out  of  his  mind.  There 
is  only  one  whom  he  can  safely  try  to  please,  and  that 
is  himself.  If  he  does  this  he  will  very  probably  please 
other  people ;  but  if  he  does  not  please  himself  he  may 
be  sure  that  he  will  not  please  them;  the  book  which 
he  has  not  enjoyed  writing  no  one  will  enjoy  reading. 
Still,  I  would  not  have  him  attach  too  little  conse 
quence  to  the  influence  of  the  press.  I  should  say, 
let  him  take  the  celebrity  it  gives  him  gratefully  but 
not  too  seriously;  let  him  reflect  that  he  is  often  the 
necessity  rather  than  the  ideal  of  the  paragrapher, 
and  that  the  notoriety  the  journalists  bestow  upon 
him  is  not  the  measure  of  their  acquaintance  with  his 

25 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

work,  far  less  his  meaning.  They  are  good  fellows, 
those  hard-pushed,  poor  fellows  of  the  press,  but  the 
very  conditions  of  their  censure,  friendly  or  unfriend 
ly,  forbid  it  thoroughness,  and  it  must  often  have 
more  zeal  than  knowledge  in  it. 


IX 

There  are  some  sorts  of  light  literature  once  greatly 
in  demand,  but  now  apparently  no  longer  desired  by 
magazine  editors,  who  ought  to  know  what  their  read 
ers  desire.  Among  these  is  the  travel  sketch,  to  me 
a  very  agreeable  kind,  and  really  to  be  regretted  in  its 
decline.  There  are  some  reasons  for  its  decline  be 
sides  a  change  of  taste  in  readers,  and  a  possible  sur 
feit.  Travel  itself  has  become  so  universal  that  every 
body,  in  a  manner,  has  been  everywhere,  and  the 
foreign  scene  has  no  longer  the  charm  of  strangeness. 
We  do  not  think  the  Old  World  either  so  romantic  or 
so  ridiculous  as  we  used;  and  perhaps  from  an  in 
stinctive  perception  of  this  altered  mood  writers  no 
longer  appeal  to  our  sentiment  or  our  humor  with 
sketches  of  outlandish  people  and  places.  Of  course, 
this  can  hold  true  only  in  a  general  way;  the  thing 
is  still  done,  but  not  nearly  so  much  done  as  formerly. 
When  one  thinks  of  the  long  line  of  American  writers 
who  have  greatly  pleased  in  this  sort,  and  who  even 
got  their  first  fame  in  it,  one  must  grieve  to  see  it  obso 
lescent.  Irving,  Curtis,  Bayard  Taylor,  Herman 
Melville,  Ross  Browne,  Warner,  Ik  Marvell,  Long 
fellow,  Lowell,  Story,  Mr.  James,  Mr.  Aldrich,  Mr. 
Hay,  Mrs.  Hunt,  Mr.  C.  W.  Stoddard,  Mark  Twain, 
and  many  others  whose  names  will  not  come  to  me 
at  the  moment,  have  in  their  several  ways  richly  con 
tributed  to  our  pleasure  in  it;  but  I  cannot  now  fancy 

26 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

a  young  author  finding  favor  with  an  editor  in  a  sketch 
of  travel  or  a  study  of  foreign  manners  and  customs; 
his  work  would  have  to  be  of  the  most  signal  impor 
tance  and  brilliancy  to  overcome  the  editor's  feeling 
that  the  thing  had  been  done  already;  and  I  believe 
that  a  publisher,  if  offered  a  book  of  such  things,  would 
look  at  it  askance  and  plead  the  well-known  quiet  of 
the  trade.  Still,  I  may  be  mistaken. 

I  am  rather  more  confident  about  the  decline  of  an 
other  literary  species — namely,  the  light  essay.  We 
have  essays  enough  and  to  spare  of  certain  soberer 
and  severer  sorts,  such  as  grapple  with  problems  and 
deal  with  conditions;  but  the  kind  that  I  mean,  the 
slightly  humorous,  gentle,  refined,  and  humane  kind, 
seems  no  longer  to  abound  as  it  once  did.  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  editor  discourages  them,  knowing 
his  readers'  frame,  or  whether  they  do  not  offer  them 
selves,  but  I  seldom  find  them  in  the  magazines.  I 
certainly  do  not  believe  that  if  any  one  were  now  to 
write  essays  such  as  Warner's  Backlog  Studies,  an 
editor  would  refuse  them;  and  perhaps  nobody  really 
writes  them.  Nobody  seems  to  write  the  sort  that 
Colonel  Higginson  formerly  contributed  to  the  peri 
odicals,  or  such  as  Emerson  wrote.  Without  a  great 
name  behind  it,  I  am  afraid  that  a  volume  of  essays 
would  find  few  buyers,  even  after  the  essays  had 
made  a  public  in  the  magazines.  There  are,  of  course, 
instances  to  the  contrary,  but  they  are  not  so  many  or 
so  striking  as  to  make  me  think  that  the  essay  could 
be  offered  as  a  good  opening  for  business  talent. 

I  suspect  that  good  poetry  by  well-known  hands 
was  never  better  paid  in  the  magazines  than  it  is  now; 
I  must  say,  too,  that  I  think  the  quality  of  the  minor 
poetry  of  our  day  is  better  than  that  of  twenty-five  or 
thirty  years  ago.  I  could  name  half  a  score  of  young 
poets  whose  work  from  time  to  time  gives  me  great 

27 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

pleasure,  by  the  reality  of  its  feeling  and  the  delicate 
perfection  of  its  art,  but  I  will  not  name  them,  for  fear 
of  passing  over  half  a  score  of  others  equally  mer 
itorious.  We  have  certainly  no  reason  to  be  discour 
aged,  whatever  reason  the  poets  themselves  have  to 
be  so,  and  I  do  not  think  that  even  in  the  short  story 
our  younger  writers  are  doing  better  work  than  they 
are  doing  in  the  slighter  forms  of  verse.  Yet  the  notion 
of  inviting  business  talent  into  this  field  would  be  as 
preposterous  as  that  of  asking  it  to  devote  itself  to  the 
essay.  What  book  of  verse  by  a  recent  poet,  if  we 
except  some  such  peculiarly  gifted  poet  as  Mr.  Whit- 
comb  Riley,  has  paid  its  expenses,  not  to  speak  of  any 
profit  to  the  author?  Of  course,  it  would  be  rather 
more  offensive  and  ridiculous  that  it  should  do  so 
than  that  any  other  form  of  literary  art  should  do 
so;  and  yet  there  is  no  more  provision  in  our  eco 
nomic  system  for  the  support  of  the  poet  apart  from 
his  poems  than  there  is  for  the  support  of  the  novelist 
apart  from  his  novel.  One  could  not  make  any  more 
money  by  writing  poetry  than  by  writing  history, 
but  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  while  the  historians  have 
usually  been  rich  men,  and  able  to  afford  the  luxury 
of  writing  history,  the  poets  have  usually  been  poor 
men,  with  no  pecuniary  justification  in  their  devotion 
to  a  calling  which  is  so  seldom  an  election. 

To  be  sure,  it  can  be  said  for  them  that  it  costs  far 
less  to  set  up  poet  than  to  set  up  historian.  There 
is  no  outlay  for  copying  documents,  or  visiting  libra 
ries,  or  buying  books.  In  fact,  except  as  historian, 
the  man  of  letters,  in  whatever  walk,  has  not  only 
none  of  the  expenses  of  other  men  of  business,  but 
none  of  the  expenses  of  other  artists.  He  has  no  such 
outlay  to  make  for  materials,  or  models,  or  studio  rent 
as  the  painter  or  the  sculptor  has,  and  his  income, 
such  as  it  is,  is  immediate.  If  he  strikes  the  fancy 

28 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

of  the  editor  with  the  first  thing  he  offers,  as  he  very 
well  may,  it  is  as  well  with  him  as  with  other  men 
after  long  years  of  apprenticeship.  Although  he  will 
always  be  the  better  for  an  apprenticeship,  and  the 
longer  apprenticeship  the  better,  he  may  practically 
need  none  at  all.  Such  are  the  strange  conditions  of 
his  acceptance  with  the  public,  that  he  may  please 
better  without  it  than  with  it.  An  author's  first  book 
is  too  often  not  only  his  luckiest,  but  really  his  best; 
it  has  a  brightness  that  dies  out  under  the  school  he 
puts  himself  to,  but  a  painter  or  a  sculptor  is  only  the 
gainer  by  all  the  school  he  can  give  himself. 


In  view  of  this  fact  it  becomes  again  very  hard  t 
establish  the  author's  status  in  the  business  world 
and  at  moments  I  have  grave  question  whether  h 
belongs  there  at  all,  except  as  a  novelist.     There  is 
of  course,  no  outlay  for  him  in  this  sort,  any  more  thai 
in  any  other  sort  of  literature,  but  it  at  least  supposes 
and  exacts  some  measure  of  preparation.     A  young 
writer  may  produce  a  brilliant  and  very  perfect  ro 
mance,  just  as  he  may  produce  a  brilliant  and  very 
perfect  poem,  but  in  the  field  of  realistic  fiction,  or  in 
what  we  used  to  call  the  novel  of  manners,  a  writer 
can  only  produce  an  inferior  book  at  the  outset.    For 
this  work  he  needs  experience  and  observation,  not 
so  much  of  others  as  of  himself,  for  ultimately  his  char 
acters  will  all  come  out  of  himself,  and  he  will  need 
to  know  motive  and  character  with   such   thorough 
ness  and  accuracy  as  he  can  acquire  only  through 
his  own  heart.     A  man  remains  in  a  measure  strange 
to  himself  as  long  as  he  lives,  and  the  very  sources 
of  novelty  in  his  work  will  be  within  himself;  he  can 

29 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

continue  to  give  it  freshness  in  no  other  way  than  by 
knowing  himself  better  and  better.  But  a  young 
writer  and  an  untrained  writer  has  not  yet  begun  to 
be  acquainted  even  with  the  lives  of  other  men.  The 
world  around  him  remains  a  secret  as  well  as  the  world 
within  him,  and  both  unfold  themselves  simultane 
ously  to  that  experience  of  joy  and  sorrow  that  can 
come  only  with  the  lapse  of  time.  Until  he  is  well  on 
towards  forty,  he  will  hardly  have  assimilated  the 
materials  of  a  great  novel,  although  he  may  have 
amassed  them.  The  novelist,  then,  is  a  man  of  let 
ters  who  is  like  a  man  of  business  in  the  necessity  of 
preparation  for  his  calling,  though  he  does  not  pay 
store-rent,  and  may  carry  all  his  affairs  under  his  hat, 
as  the  phrase  is.  He  alone  among  men  of  letters  may 
look  forward  to  that  sort  of  continuous  prosperity 
which  follows  from  capacity  and  diligence  in  other 
vocations;  for  story-telling  is  now  a  fairly  recognized 
trade,  and  the  story-teller  has  a  money-standing  in 
the  economic  world.  It  is  not  a  very  high  standing, 
I  think,  and  I  have  expressed  the  belief  that  it  does  not 
bring  him  the  respect  felt  for  men  in  other  lines  of  busi 
ness.  Still  our  people  cannot  deny  some  considera 
tion  to  a  man  who  gets  a  hundred  dollars  a  thousand 
words  or  whose  book  sells  five  hundred  thousand  copies 
or  less.  That  is  a  fact  appreciable  to  business,  and 
the  man  of  letters  in  the  line  of  fiction  may  reason 
ably  feel  that  his  place  in  our  civilization,  though  he 
may  owe  it  to  the  women  who  form  the  great  mass  of 
his  readers,  has  something  of  the  character  of  a  vested 
interest  in  the  eyes  of  men.  There  is,  indeed,  as  yet 
no  conspiracy  law  which  will  avenge  the  attempt  to 
injure  him  in  his  business.  A  critic,  or  a  dark  con 
juration  of  critics,  may  damage  him  at  will  and  to 
the  extent  of  their  power,  and  he  has  no  recourse  but 
to  write  better  books,  or  worse.  The  law  will  do  noth- 

30 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

ing  for  him,  and  a  boycott  of  his  books  might  be  preach 
ed  with  immunity  by  any  class  of  men  not  liking  his 
opinions  on  the  question  of  industrial  slavery  or  anti- 
paedobaptism.  Still  the  market  for  his  wares  is  stead 
ier  than  the  market  for  any  other  kind  of  literary  wares, 
and  the  prices  are  better.  The  historian,  who  is  a 
kind  of  inferior  realist,  has  something  like  the  same 
steadiness  in  the  market,  but  the  prices  he  can  com 
mand  are  much  lower,  and  the  two  branches  of  the 
novelist's  trade  are  not  to  be  compared  in  a  business 
way.  As  for  the  essayist,  the  poet,  the  traveller,  the 
popular  scientist,  they  are  nowhere  in  the  competition 
for  the  favor  of  readers.  The  reviewer,  indeed,  has 
a  pretty  steady  call  for  his  work,  but  I  fancy  the  re 
viewers  who  get  a  hundred  dollars  a  thousand  words 
could  all  stand  upon  the  point  of  a  needle  without 
crowding  one  another;  I  should  rather  like  to  see  them 
doing  it.  Another  gratifying  fact  of  the  situation 
is  that  the  best  writers  of  fiction,  who  are  most  in 
demand  with  the  magazines,  probably  get  nearly  as 
much  money  for  their  work  as  the  inferior  novelists 
who  outsell  them  by  tens  of  thousands,  and  who  make 
their  appeal  to  the  innumerable  multitude  of  the  less 
educated  and  less  cultivated  buyers  of  fiction  in  book 
form.  I  think  they  earn  their  money,  but  if  I  did  not 
think  all  of  the  higher  class  of  novelists  earned  so 
much  money  as  they  get,  I  should  not  be  so  invidious 
as  to  single  out  for  reproach  those  who  did  not. 

The  difficulty  about  payment,  as  I  have  hinted,  is 
that  literature  has  no  objective  value  really,  but  only 
a  subjective  value,  if  I  may  so  express  it.  A  poem, 
an  essay,  a  novel,  even  a  paper  on  political  economy, 
may  be  worth  gold  untold  to  one  reader,  and  worth 
nothing  whatever  to  another.  It  may  be  precious  to 
one  mood  of  the  reader,  and  worthless  to  another  mood 
of  the  same  reader.  How,  then,  is  it  to  be  priced,  and 

31 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

how  is  it  to  be  fairly  marketed?  All  people  must  be 
fed,  and  all  people  must  be  clothed,  and  all  people 
must  be  housed;  and  so  meat,  raiment,  and  shelter 
are  things  of  positive  and  obvious  necessity,  which 
may  fitly  have  a  market  price  put  upon  them.  But 
there  is  no  such  positive  and  obvious  necessity,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  for  fiction,  or  not  for  the  higher  sort  of 
fiction.  The  sort  of  fiction  which  corresponds  in  litera 
ture  to  the  circus  and  the  variety  theatre  in  the  show- 
business  seems  essential  to  the  spiritual  health  of  the 
masses,  but  the  most  cultivated  of  the  classes  can  get 
on,  from  time  to  time,  without  an  artistic  novel.  This 
is  a  great  pity,  and  I  should  be  very  willing  that  read 
ers  might  feel  something  like  the  pangs  of  hunger 
and  cold,  when  deprived  of  their  finer  fiction;  but  ap 
parently  they  never  do.  Their  dumb  and  passive 
need  is  apt  only  to  manifest  itself  negatively,  or  in 
the  form  of  weariness  of  this  author  or  that.  The 
publisher  of  books  can  ascertain  the  fact  through  the 
declining  sales  of  a  writer;  but  the  editor  of  a  maga 
zine,  who  is  the  best  customer  of  the  best  writers,  must 
feel  the  market  with  a  much  more  delicate  touch.  Some 
times  it  may  be  years  before  he  can  satisfy  himself  that 
his  readers  are  sick  of  Smith,  and  are  pining  for  Jones ; 
even  then  he  cannot  know  how  long  their  mood  will  last, 
and  he  is  by  no  means  safe  in  cutting  down  Smith's 
price  and  putting  up  Jones's.  With  the  best  will  in  the 
world  to  pay  justly,  he  cannot.  Smith,  who  has  been 
boring  his  readers  to  death  for  a  year,  may  write  to 
morrow  a  thing  that  will  please  them  so  much  that  he 
will  at  once  be  a  prime  favorite  again;  and  Jones, 
whom  they  have  been  asking  for,  may  do  something 
so  uncharacteristic  and  alien  that  it  will  be  a  flat  fail 
ure  in  the  magazine.  The  only  thing  that  gives  either 
writer  positive  value  is  his  acceptance  with  the  reader ; 
but  the  acceptance  is  from  month  to  month  wholly 

32 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

uncertain.  Authors  are  largely  matters  of  fashion, 
like  this  style  of  bonnet,  or  that  shape  of  gown.  Last 
spring  the  dresses  were  all  made  with  lace  berthas, 
and  Smith  was  read;  this  year  the  butterfly  capes  are 
worn,  and  Jones  is  the  favorite  author.  Who  shall 
forecast  the  fall  and  winter  modes? 


XI 

In  this  inquiry  it  is  always  the  author  rather  than 
the  publisher,  always  the  contributor  rather  than  the 
editor,  whom  I  am  concerned  for.  I  study  the  diffi 
culties  of  the  publisher  and  editor  only  because  they 
involve  the  author  and  the  contributor ;  if  they  did  not, 
I  will  not  say  with  how  hard  a  heart  I  should  turn  from 
them;  my  only  pang  now  in  scrutinizing  the  business 
conditions  of  literature  is  for  the  makers  of  literature, 
not  the  purveyors  of  it. 

After  all,  and  in  spite  of  my  vaunting  title,  is  the 
man  of  letters  ever  a  business  man?  I  suppose  that, 
strictly  speaking,  he  never  is,  except  in  those  rare  in 
stances  where,  through  need  or  choice,  he  is  the  pub 
lisher  as  well  as  the  author  of  his  books.  Then  he 
puts  something  on  the  market  and  tries  to  sell  it  there, 
and  is  a  man  of  business.  But  otherwise  he  is  an 
artist  merely,  and  is  allied  to  the  great  mass  of  wage- 
workers  who  are  paid  for  the  labor  they  have  put  into 
the  thing  done  or  the  thing  made;  who  live  by  doing 
or  making  a  thing,  and  not  by  marketing  a  thing  after 
some  other  man  has  done  it  or  made  it.  The  quality 
of  the  thing  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  economic  nat 
ure  of  the  case;  the  author  is,  in  the  last  analysis, 
merely  a  working-man,  and  is  under  the  rule  that  gov 
erns  the  working-man's  life.  If  he  is  sick  or  sad,  and 
cannot  work,  if  he  is  lazy  or  tipsy,  and  will  not,  then 
8  33 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

he  earns  nothing.  He  cannot  delegate  his  business 
to  a  clerk  or  a  manager;  it  will  not  go  on  while  he  is 
sleeping.  The  wage  he  can  command  depends  strictly 
upon  his  skill  and  diligence. 

I  myself  am  neither  sorry  nor  ashamed  for  this; 
I  am  glad  and  proud  to  be  of  those  who  eat  their  bread 
in  the  sweat  of  their  own  brows,  and  not  the  sweat  of 
other  men's  brows;  I  think  my  bread  is  the  sweeter 
for  it.  In  the  mean  time,  I  have  no  blame  for  business 
men;  they  are  no  more  of  the  condition  of  things  than 
we  working-men  are ;  they  did  no  more  to  cause  it  or 
create  it;  but  I  would  rather  be  in  my  place  than  in 
theirs,  and  I  wish  that  I  could  make  all  my  fellow- 
artists  realize  that  economically  they  are  the  same  as 
mechanics,  farmers,  day-laborers.  It  ought  to  be  our 
glory  that  we  produce  something,  that  we  bring  into 
the  world  something  that  was  not  choately  there  be 
fore;  that  at  least  we  fashion  or  shape  something 
anew;  and  we  ought  to  feel  the  tie  that  binds  us  to 
all  the  toilers  of  the  shop  and  field,  not  as  a  galling 
chain,  but  as  a  mystic  bond  also  uniting  us  to  Him 
who  works  hitherto  and  evermore. 

I  know  very  well  that  to  the  vast  multitude  of  our  fel 
low-working-men  we  artists  are  the  shadows  of  names, 
or  not  even  the  shadows.  I  like  to  look  the  facts  in  the 
face,  for  though  their  lineaments  are  often  terrible, 
yet  there  is  light  nowhere  else;  and  I  will  not  pretend, 
in  this  light,  that  the  masses  care  any  more  for  us  than 
we  care  for  the  masses,  or  so  much.  Nevertheless, 
and  most  distinctly,  we  are  not  of  the  classes.  Except 
in  our  work,  they  have  no  use  for  us;  if  now  and  then 
they  fancy  qualifying  their  material  splendor  or  their 
spiritual  dulness  with  some  artistic  presence,  the  at 
tempt  is  always  a  failure  that  bruises  and  abashes. 
In  so  far  as  the  artist  is  a  man  of  the  world,  he  is  the 
less  an  artist,  and  if  he  fashions  himself  upon  fashion, 

34 


THE  MAN  OF  LETTERS  AS  A  MAN  OF  BUSINESS 

he  deforms  his  art.  We  all  know  that  ghastly  type; 
it  is  more  absurd  even  than  the  figure  which  is  really 
of  the  world,  which  was  born  and  bred  in  it,  and  con 
ceives  of  nothing  outside  of  it,  or  above  it.  In  the 
social  world,  as  well  as  in  the  business  world,  the  art 
ist  is  anomalous,  in  the  actual  conditions,  and  he  is 
perhaps  a  little  ridiculous. 

Yet  he  has  to  be  somewhere,  poor  fellow,  and  I  think 
that  he  will  do  well  to  regard  himself  as  in  a  transition 
state.  He  is  really  of  the  masses,  but  they  do  not  know 
it,  and  what  is  worse,  they  do  not  know  him;  as  yet 
the  common  people  do  not  hear  him  gladly  or  hear 
him  at  all.  He  is  apparently  of  the  classes ;  they  know 
him,  and  they  listen  to  him;  he  often  amuses  them 
very  much;  but  he  is  not  quite  at  ease  among  them; 
whether  they  know  it  or  not,  he  knows  that  he  is  not, 
of  their  kind.  Perhaps  he  will  never  be  at  home  any 
where  in  the  world  as  long  as  there  are  masses  whom 
he  ought  to  consort  with,  and  classes  whom  he  cannot 
consort  with.  The  prospect  is  not  brilliant  for  any 
artist  now  living,  but  perhaps  the  artist  of  the  future 
will  see  in  the  flesh  the  accomplishment  of  that  human 

\       equality  of  which  the  instinct  has  been  divinely  planted 

V     in  the  human  soul. 


WORRIES   OF   A   WINTER  WALK 

other  winter,  as  I  was  taking  a  morning  walk 
1  down  to  the  East  River,  I  came  upon  a  bit  of  our 
motley  life,  a  fact  of  our  piebald  civilization,  which 
has  perplexed  me  from  time  to  time,  ever  since,  and 
which  I  wish  now  to  leave  with  the  reader,  for  his  or 
her  more  thoughtful  consideration. 


The  morning  was  extremely  cold.  It  professed  to 
be  sunny,  and  there  was  really  some  sort  of  hard  glit 
ter  in  the  air,  which,  so  far  from  being  tempered  by  this 
effulgence,  seemed  all  the  stonier  for  it.  Blasts  of 
frigid  wind  swept  the  streets,  and  buffeted  each  other 
in  a  fury  of  resentment  when  they  met  around  the  cor 
ners.  Although  I  was  passing  through  a  populous 
tenement-house  quarter,  my  way  was  not  hindered  by 
the  sports  of  the  tenement-house  children,  who  com 
monly  crowd  one  from  the  sidewalks;  no  frowrzy  head 
looked  out  over  the  fire-escapes;  there  were  no  ped 
dlers'  carts  or  voices  in  the  road- way ;  not  above  three 
or  four  shawl-hooded  women  cowered  out  of  the  little 
shops  with  small  purchases  in  their  hands;  not  so 
many  tiny  girls  with  jugs  opened  the  doors  of  the  beer 
saloons.  The  butchers'  windows  were  painted  with 
patterns  of  frost,  through  which  I  could  dimly  see  the 
frozen  meats  hanging  like  hideous  stalactites  from 

36 


WORRIES    OF   A   WINTER   WALK 

the  roof.  When  I  came  to  the  river,  I  ached  in  sym 
pathy  with  the  shipping  painfully  atilt  on  the  rock- 
like  surface  of  the  brine,  which  broke  against  the  piers, 
and  sprayed  itself  over  them  like  showers  of  powdered 
quartz. 

But  it  was  before  I  reached  this  final  point  that  I  re 
ceived  into  my  consciousness  the  moments  of  the  hu 
man  comedy  wrhich  have  been  an  increasing  burden  to 
it.  Within  a  block  of  the  river  I  met  a  child  so  small 
that  at  first  I  almost  refused  to  take  any  account  of  her, 
until  she  appealed  to  my  sense  of  humor  by  her  amus 
ing  disproportion  to  the  pail  which  she  was  lugging 
in  front  of  her  with  both  of  her  little  mittened  hands. 
I  am  scrupulous  about  mittens,  though  I  was  tempted 
to  write  of  her  little  naked  hands,  red  with  the  pitiless 
cold.  This  would  have  been  more  effective,  but  it 
would  not  have  been  true,  and  the  truth  obliges  me 
to  own  that  she  had  a  stout,  warm-looking  knit  jacket 
on.  The  pail — which  was  half  her  height  and  twice 
her  bulk — was  filled  to  overflowing  with  small  pieces 
of  coal  and  coke,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  this  I  might 
have  taken  her  for  a  child  of  the  better  classes,  she 
was  so  comfortably  clad.  But  in  that  case  she  would 
have  had  to  be  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  old,  in  order  to 
be  doing  so  efficiently  and  responsibly  the  work  which, 
as  the  child  of  the  worse  classes,  she  was  actually  do 
ing  at  five  or  six.  We  must,  indeed,  allow  that  the 
early  self-helpfulness  of  such  children  is  very  remark 
able,  and  all  the  more  so  because  they  grow  up  into  5 
men  and  women  so  stupid  that,  according  to  the  the-; 
ories  of  all  polite  economists,  they  have  to  have  their, 
discontent  with  their  conditions  put  into  their  heads; 
by  malevolent  agitators. 

From  time  to  time  this  tiny  creature  put  down  her 
heavy  burden  to  rest ;  it  was,  of  course,  only  relatively 
heavy;  a  man  would  have  made  nothing  of  it.  From 

37 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

time  to  time  she  was  forced  to  stop  and  pick  up  the  bits 
of  coke  that  tumbled  from  her  heaping  pail.  She 
could  not  consent  to  lose  one  of  them,  and  at  last,  when 
she  found  she  could  not  make  all  of  them  stay  on  the 
heap,  she  thriftily  tucked  them  into  the  pockets  of  her 
jacket,  and  trudged  sturdily  on  till  she  met  a  boy  some 
years  older,  who  planted  himself  in  her  path  and  stood 
looking  at  her,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets.  I  do 
not  say  he  was  a  bad  boy,  but  I  could  see  in  his  furtive 
eye  that  she  was  a  sore  temptation  to  him.  The  chance 
to  have  fun  with  her  by  upsetting  her  bucket,  and 
scattering  her  coke  about  till  she  cried  with  vexation, 
was  one  which  might  not  often  present  itself,  and  I  do 
not  know  what  made  him  forego  it,  but  I  know  that 
he  did,  and  that  he  finally  passed  her,  as  I  have  seen 
a  young  dog  pass  a  little  cat,  after  having  stopped  it, 
and  thoughtfully  considered  worrying  it. 

I  turned  to  watch  the  child  out  of  sight,  and  when  I 
faced  about  towards  the  river  again  I  received  the  sec 
ond  instalment  of  my  present  perplexity.  A  cart, 
heavily  laden  with  coke,  drove  out  of  the  coal-yard 
which  I  now  perceived  I  had  come  to,  and  after  this 
cart  followed  two  brisk  old  women,  snugly  clothed 
and  tightly  tucked  in  against  the  cold  like  the  child, 
who  vied  with  each  other  in  catching  up  the  lumps  of 
coke  that  were  jolted  from  the  load,  and  filling  their 
aprons  with  them;  such  old  women,  so  hale,  so  spry, 
so  tough  and  tireless,  with  the  withered  apples  red  in 
their  cheeks,  I  have  not  often  seen.  They  may  have 
been  about  sixty  years,  or  sixty-five,  the  time  of  life 
when  most  women  are  grandmothers  and  are  relegated 
on  their  merits  to  the  cushioned  seats  of  their  chil 
dren's  homes,  softly  silk-gowned  and  lace-capped,  dear 
visions  of  lilac  and  lavender,  to  be  loved  and  petted  by 
their  grandchildren.  The  fancy  can  hardly  put  such 
sweet  ladies  in  the  place  of  those  nimble  beldams,  who 

38 


WORRIES    OF    A    WINTER   WALK 

hopped  about  there  in  the  wind-swept  street,  plucking 
up  their  day's  supply  of  firing  from  the  involuntary 
bounty  of  the  cart.  Even  the  attempt  is  unseemly, 
and  whether  mine  is  at  best  but  a  feeble  fancy,  not 
bred  to  strenuous  feats  of  any  kind,  it  fails  to  bring 
them  before  me  in  that  figure.  I  cannot  imagine  ladies 
doing  that  kind  of  thing ;  I  can  only  imagine  women 
who  had  lived  hard  and  worked  hard  all  their  lives 
doing  it ;  who  had  begun  to  fight  with  want  from  their 
cradles,  like  that  little  one  with  the  pail,  and  must 
fight  without  ceasing  to  their  graves.  But  I  am  not 
unreasonable;  I  understand  and  I  understood  what  I 
saw  to  be  one  of  the  things  that  must  be,  for  the  per 
fectly  good  and  sufficient  reason  that  they  always 
have  been;  and  at  the  moment  I  got  what  pleasure  I 
could  out  of  the  stolid  indifference  of  the  cart-driver, 
who  never  looked  about  him  at  the  scene  which  inter 
ested  me,  but  jolted  onward,  leaving  a  trail  of  pungent 
odors  from  his  pipe  in  the  freezing  eddies  of  the  air  be 
hind  him. 

II 

It  is  still  not  at  all,  or  not  so  much,  the  fact  that 
troubles  me ;  it  is  what  to  do  with  the  fact.  The  ques 
tion  began  with  me  almost  at  once,  or  at  least  as  soon 
as  I  faced  about  and  began  to  walk  homeward  with  the 
wind  at  my  back.  I  was  then  so  much  more  comfort 
able  that  the  aesthetic  instinct  thawed  out  in  me,  and 
I  found  myself  wondering  what  use  I  could  make  of 
what  I  had  seen  in  the  way  of  my  trade.  Should  I 
have  something  very  pathetic,  like  the  old  grandmoth 
er  going  out  day  after  day  to  pick  up  coke  for  her  sick 
daughter's  freezing  orphans  till  she  fell  sick  herself? 
What  should  I  do  with  the  family  in  that  case?  They 
could  not  be  left  at  that  point,  and  I  promptly  imagined 

39 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

a  granddaughter,  a  girl  of  about  eighteen,  very  pretty 
and  rather  proud,  a  sort  of  belle  in  her  humble  neigh 
borhood,  who  should  take  her  grandmother's  place. 
I  decided  that  I  should  have  her  Italian,  because  I 
knew  something  of  Italians,  and  could  manage  that 
nationality  best,  and  I  should  call  her  Maddalena; 
either  Maddalena  or  Marina;  Marina  would  be  more 
Venetian,  and  I  saw  that  I  must  make  her  Venetian. 
Here  I  was  on  safe  ground,  and  at  once  the  love-interest 
appeared  to  help  me  out.  By  virtue  of  the  law  of  con 
trasts,  it  appeared  to  me  in  the  person  of  a  Scandina 
vian  lover,  tall,  silent,  blond,  whom  I  at  once  felt 
I  could  do,  from  my  acquaintance  with  Scandina 
vian  lovers  in  Norwegian  novels.  His  name  was 
Janssen,  a  good,  distinctive  Scandinavian  name  ;  I 
do  not  know  but  it  is  Swedish  ;  and  I  thought  he 
might  very  well  be  a  Swede  ;  I  could  imagine  his 
manner  from  that  of  a  Swedish  waitress  we  once 
had. 

Janssen — Jan  Janssen,  say — drove  the  coke-cart 
which  Marina's  grandmother  used  to  follow  out  of  the 
coke-yard,  to  pick  up  the  bits  of  coke  as  they  were 
jolted  from  it,  and  he  had  often  noticed  her  with  deep 
indifference.  At  first  he  noticed  Marina — or  Nina, 
as  I  soon  saw  I  must  call  her — with  the  same  uncon 
cern;  for  in  her  grandmother's  hood  and  jacket  and 
check  apron,  with  her  head  held  shamefacedly  down 
ward,  she  looked  exactly  like  the  old  woman.  I  thought 
I  would  have  Nina  make  her  self-sacrifice  rebelliously, 
as  a  girl  like  her  would  be  apt  to  do,  and  follow  the  coke- 
cart  with  tears.  This  would  catch  Janssen's  notice, 
and  he  would  wonder,  perhaps  with  a  little  pang,  what 
the  old  woman  was  crying  about,  and  then  he  would 
see  that  it  was  not  the  old  woman.  He  would  see  that 
it  was  Nina,  and  he  would  be  in  love  with  her  at  once, 
for  she  would  not  only  be  very  pretty,  but  he  would 

40 


WORRIES   OF   A  WINTER   WALK 

know  that  she  was  good,  if  she  were  willing  to  help 
her  family  in  that  way. 

He  would  respect  the  girl,  in  his  dull,  sluggish, 
Northern  way.  He  would  do  nothing  to  betray  him 
self.  But  little  by  little  he  would  begin  to  befriend  her. 
He  would  carelessly  overload  his  cart  before  he  left  the 
yard,  so  that  the  coke  would  fall  from  it  more  lavishly; 
and  not  only  this,  but  if  he  saw  a  stone  or  a  piece  of 
coal  in  the  street  he  would  drive  over  it,  so  that  more 
coke  would  be  jolted  from  his  load. 

Nina  would  get  to  watching  for  him.  She  must 
not  notice  him  much  at  first,  except  as  the  driver  of 
the  overladen,  carelessly  driven  cart.  But  after  sev 
eral  mornings  she  must  see  that  he  is  very  strong  and 
handsome.  Then,  after  several  mornings  more,  their 
eyes  must  meet,  her  vivid  black  eyes,  with  the  tears 
of  rage  and  shame  in  them,  and  his  cold  blue  eyes. 
This  must  be  the  climax ;  and  just  at  this  point  I  gave 
my  fancy  a  rest,  while  I  went  into  a  drug-store  at  the 
corner  of  Avenue  B  to  get  my  hands  warm. 

They  were  abominably  cold,  even  in  my  pockets, 
and  I  had  suffered  past  several  places  trying  to  think 
of  an  excuse  to  go  in.  I  now  asked  the  druggist  if 
he  had  something  which  I  felt  pretty  sure  he  had  not, 
and  this  put  him  in  the  wrong,  so  that  when  we  fell 
into  talk  he  was  very  polite.  We  agreed  admirably 
about  the  hard  times,  and  he  gave  way  respectfully 
when  I  doubted  his  opinion  that  the  winters  were  get 
ting  milder.  I  made  him  reflect  that  there  was  no 
reason  for  this,  and  that  it  was  probably  an  illusion 
from  that  deeper  impression  which  all  experiences 
made  on  us  in  the  past,  when  we  were  younger ;  I  ought 
to  say  that  he  was  an  elderly  man,  too.  I  said  I  fancied 
such  a  morning  as  this  was  not  very  mild  for  people 
that  had  no  fires,  and  this  brought  me  back  again  to 
Janssen  and  Marina,  by  way  of  the  coke-cart.  The 

41 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

thought  of  them  rapt  me  so  far  from  the  druggist  that 
I  listened  to  his  answer  with  a  glazing  eye,  and  did 
not  know  what  he  said.  My  hands  had  now  got  warm, 
and  I  bade  him  good-morning  with  a  parting  regret, 
which  he  civilly  shared,  that  he  had  not  the  thing  I 
had  not  wanted,  and  I  pushed  out  again  into  the  cold, 
which  I  found  not  so  bad  as  before. 

My  hero  and  heroine  were  waiting  for  me  there,  and 
I  saw  that  to  be  truly  modern,  to  be  at  once  realistic 
and  mystical,  to  have  both  delicacy  and  strength,  I 
must  not  let  them  get  further  acquainted  with  each 
other.  The  affair  must  simply  go  on  from  day  to  day, 
till  one  morning  Jan  must  note  that  it  was  again  the 
grandmother  and  no  longer  the  girl  who  was  follow 
ing  his  cart.  She  must  be  very  weak  from  a  long 
sickness — I  was  not  sure  whether  to  have  it  the  grippe 
or  not,  but  I  decided  upon  that  provisionally — and  she 
must  totter  after  Janssen,  so  that  he  must  get  down 
after  a  while  to  speak  to  her  under  pretence  of  arrang 
ing  the  tail-board  of  his  cart,  or  something  of  that  kind ; 
I  did  not  care  for  the  detail.  They  should  get  into  talk 
in  the  broken  English  which  was  the  only  language 
they  could  have  in  common,  and  she  should  burst  into 
tears,  and  tell  him  that  now  Nina  was  sick ;  I  imagined 
making  this  very  simple,  but  very  touching,  and  I 
really  made  it  so  touching  that  it  brought  the  lump 
into  my  own  throat,  and  I  knew  it  would  be  effective 
with  the  reader.  Then  I  had  Jan  get  back  upon  his 
cart,  and  drive  stolidly  on  again,  and  the  old  woman 
limp  feebly  after. 

There  should  not  be  any  more,  I  decided,  except 
that  one  very  cold  morning,  like  that ;  Jan  should  be 
driving  through  that  street,  and  should  be  passing 
the  door  of  the  tenement  house  where  Nina  had  lived, 
just  as  a  little  procession  should  be  issuing  from  it. 
The  fact  must  be  told  in  brief  sentences,  with  a  total 

42 


WORRIES   OF   A   WINTER   WALK 

absence  of  emotionality.  The  last  touch  must  be 
Jan's  cart  turning  the  street  corner  with  Jan's  figure 
sharply  silhouetted  against  the  clear,  cold  morning 
light.  Nothing  more. 

But  it  was  at  this  point  that  another  notion  came 
into  my  mind,  so  antic,  so  impish,  so  fiendish,  that  if 
there  were  still  any  Evil  One,  in  a  world  which  gets 
on  so  poorly  without  him,  I  should  attribute  it  to  his 
suggestion;  and  this  was  that  the  procession  which 
Jan  saw  issuing  from  the  tenement-house  door  was 
not  a  funeral  procession,  as  the  reader  will  have  rashly 
fancied,  but  a  wedding  procession,  with  Nina  at  the 
head  of  it,  quite  well  again,  and  going  to  be  married 
to  the  little  brown  youth  with  ear-rings  who  had  long 
had  her  heart. 

With  a  truly  perverse  instinct,  I  saw  how  strong 
this  might  be  made,  at  the  fond  reader's  expense,  to  be 
sure,  and  how  much  more  pathetic,  in  such  a  case, 
the  silhouetted  figure  on  the  coke-cart  would  really 
be.  I  should,  of  course,  make  it  perfectly  plain  that  no 
one  was  to  blame,  and  that  the  whole  affair  had  been 
so  tacit  on  Jan's  part  that  Nina  might  very  well  have 
known  nothing  of  his  feeling  for  her.  Perhaps  at  the 
very  end  I  might  subtly  insinuate  that  it  was  possible 
he  might  have  had  no  such  feeling  towards  her  as  the 
reader  had  been  led  to  imagine. 


m 

The  question  as  to  which  ending  I  ought  to  have 
given  my  romance  is  what  has  ever  since  remained 
to  perplex  me,  and  it  is  what  has  prevented  my  ever 
writing  it.  Here  is  material  of  the  best  sort  lying  use 
less  on  my  hands,  which,  if  I  could  only  make  up  my 
mind,  might  be  wrought  into  a  short  story  as  affect- 

43 


LITERATURE  AND    LIFE 

ing  as  any  that  wring  our  hearts  in  fiction ;  and  I  think 
I  could  get  something  fairly  unintelligible  out  of  the 
broken  English  of  Jan  and  Nina's  grandmother,  and 
certainly  something  novel.  All  that  I  can  do  now, 
however,  is  to  put  the  case  before  the  reader,  and  let 
him  decide  for  himself  how  it  should  end. 

The  mere  humanist,  I  suppose,  might  say  that  I 
am  rightly  served  for  having  regarded  the  fact  I  had 
witnessed  as  material  for  fiction  at  all;  that  I  had  no 
business  to  bewitch  it  with  my  miserable  art;  that  I 
ought  to  have  spoken  to  that  little  child  and  those 
poor  old  women,  and  tried  to  learn  something  of  their 
lives  from  them,  that  I  might  offer  my  knowledge  again 
for  the  instruction  of  those  whose  lives  are  easy  and 
happy  in  the  indifference  which  ignorance  breeds  in 
us.  I  own  there  is  something  in  this,  but  then,  on 
the  other  hand,  I  have  heard  it  urged  by  nice  people 
that  they  do  not  want  to  know  about  such  squalid 
lives,  that  it  is  offensive  and  out  of  taste  to  be  always 
bringing  them  in,  and  that  we  ought  to  be  writing 
about  good  society,  and  especially  creating  grandes 
dames  for  their  amusement.  This  sort  of  people  could 
say  to  the  humanist  that  he  ought  to  be  glad  there  are 
coke-carts  for  fuel  to  fall  off  from  for  the  lower  classes, 
and  that  here  was  no  case  for  sentiment ;  for  if  one  is  to 
be  interested  in  such  things  at  all,  it  must  be  aestheti 
cally,  though  even  this  is  deplorable  in  the  presence 
of  fiction  already  overloaded  with  low  life,  and  so  poor 
in  grandes  dames  as  ours. 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  SUMMER  COLONIST 

THE  season  is  ending  in  the  little  summer  settlement 
on  the  Down  East  coast  where  I  have  been  pass 
ing  the  last  three  months,  and  with  each  loath  day 
the  sense  of  its  peculiar  charm  grows  more  poignant. 
A  prescience  of  the  home  -  sickness  I  shall  feel  for  it 
when  I  go  already  begins  to  torment  me,  and  I  find 
myself  wishing  to  imagine  some  form  of  words  which 
shall  keep  a  likeness  of  it  at  least  through  the  winter; 
some  shadowy  semblance  which  I  may  turn  to  here 
after  if  any  chance  or  change  should  destroy  or  trans 
form  it,  or,  what  is  more  likely,  if  I  should  never  come 
back  to  it.  Perhaps  others  in  the  distant  future  may 
turn  to  it  for  a  glimpse  of  our  actual  life  in  one  of  its 
most  characteristic  phases;  I  am  sure  that  in  the  dis 
tant  present  there  are  many  millions  of  our  own  in 
landers  to  whom  it  would  be  altogether  strange. 


In  a  certain  sort  fragile  is  written  all  over  our  colony ; 
as  far  as  the  visible  body  of  it  is  concerned  it  is  inex 
pressibly  perishable;  a  fire  and  a  high  wind  could 
sweep  it  all  away;  and  one  of  the  most  American  of 
all  American  things  is  the  least  fitted  among  them  to 
survive  from  the  present  to  the  future,  and  impart  to 
it  the  significance  of  what  may  soon  be  a  "portion 
and  parcel "  of  our  extremely  forgetful  past. 

45 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

It  is  also  in  a  supremely  transitional  moment:  one 
might  say  that  last  year  it  was  not  quite  what  it  is 
now,  and  next  year  it  may  be  altogether  different.  In 
fact,  our  summer  colony  is  in  that  happy  hour  when 
the  rudeness  of  the  first  summer  conditions  has  been 
left  far  behind,  and  vulgar  luxury  has  not  yet  cum- 
brously  succeeded  to  a  sort  of  sylvan  distinction. 

The  type  of  its  simple  and  sufficing  hospitalities  is 
the  seven-o'clock  supper.  Every  one,  in  hotel  or  in 
cottage,  dines  between  one  and  two,  and  no  less  scru 
pulously  sups  at  seven,  unless  it  is  a  few  extremists 
who  sup  at  half-past  seven.  At  this  function,  which 
is  our  chief  social  event,  it  is  de  rigueur  for  the  men 
not  to  dress,  and  they  come  in  any  sort  of  sack  or  jack 
et  or  cutaway,  letting  the  ladies  make  up  the  pomps 
which  they  forego.  From  this  fact  may  be  inferred  the 
informality  of  the  men's  day-time  attire;  and  the  same 
note  is  sounded  in  the  whole  range  of  the  cottage  life, 
so  that  once  a  visitor  from  the  world  outside,  who  had 
been  exasperated  beyond  endurance  by  the  absence 
of  form  among  us  (if  such  an  effect  could  be  from  a 
cause  so  negative),  burst  out  with  the  reproach,  "Oh, 
you  make  a  fetish  of  your  informality!" 

"  Fetish  "  is,  perhaps,  rather  too  strong  a  word,  but  I 
should  not  mind  saying  that  informality  was  the  tute 
lary  genius  of  the  place.  American  men  are  every 
where  impatient  of  form.  It  burdens  and  bothers 
them,  and  they  like  to  throw  it  off  whenever  they  can. 
We  may  not  be  so  very  democratic  at  heart  as  we  seem, 
but  we  are  impatient  of  ceremonies  that  separate  us 
when  it  is  our  business  or  our  pleasure  to  get  at  one 
another;  and  it  is  part  of  our  splendor  to  ignore  the 
ceremonies  as  we  do  the  expenses.  We  have  all  the 
decent  grades  of  riches  and  poverty  in  our  colony,  but 
our  informality  is  not  more  the  treasure  of  the  humble 
than  of  the  great.  In  the  nature  of  things  it  cannot 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER   COLONIST 

last,  however,  and  the  only  question  is  how  long  it 
will  last.  I  think,  myself,  until  some  one  imagines 
giving  an  eight-o'clock  dinner;  then  all  the  informal 
ities  will  go,  and  the  whole  train  of  evils  which  such 
a  dinner  connotes  will  rush  in. 


II 

The  cottages  themselves  are  of  several  sorts,  and 
some  still  exist  in  the  earlier  stages  of  mutation  from 
the  fishermen's  and  farmers'  houses  which  formed 
their  germ.  But  these  are  now  mostly  let  as  lodg 
ings  to  bachelors  and  other  single  or  semi-detached 
folks  who  go  for  their  meals  to  the  neighboring  hotels 
or  boarding-houses.  The  hotels  are  each  the  centre 
of  this  sort  of  centripetal  life,  as  well  as  the  homes  of 
their  own  scores  or  hundreds  of  inmates.  A  single 
boarding-house  gathers  about  it  half  a  dozen  depend 
ent  cottages  which  it  cares  for,  and  feeds  at  its  table; 
and  even  where  the  cottages  have  kitchens  and  all  the 
housekeeping  facilities,  their  inmates  sometimes  pre 
fer  to  dine  at  the  hotels.  By  far  the  greater  number 
of  cottagers,  however,  keep  house,  bringing  their  ser 
vice  with  them  from  the  cities,  and  settling  in  their 
summer  homes  for  three  or  four  or  five  months. 

The  houses  conform  more  or  less  to  one  type :  a  pict 
uresque  structure  of  colonial  pattern,  shingled  to  the 
ground,  and  stained  or  left  to  take  a  weather-stain  of 
grayish  brown,  with  cavernous  verandas,  and  dor 
mer-windowed  roofs  covering  ten  or  twelve  rooms. 
Within  they  are,  if  not  elaborately  finished,  elaborate 
ly  fitted  up,  with  a  constant  regard  to  health  in  the 
plumbing  and  drainage.  The  water  is  brought  in  a 
system  of  pipes  from  a  lake  five  miles  away,  and  as  it 
is  only  for  summer  use  the  pipes  are  not  buried  from 

47 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

the  frost,  but  wander  along  the  surface,  through  the 
ferns  and  brambles  of  the  tough  little  sea-side  knolls 
on  which  the  cottages  are  perched,  and  climb  the  old 
tumbling  stone  walls  of  the  original  pastures  before 
diving  into  the  cemented  basements. 

Most  of  the  cottages  are  owned  by  their  occupants, 
and  furnished  by  them;  the  rest,  not  less  attractive 
and  hardly  less  tastefully  furnished,  belong  to  natives, 
who  have  caught  on  to  the  architectural  and  domestic 
preferences  of  the  summer  people,  and  have  built  them 
to  let.  The  rugosities  of  the  stony  pasture  land  end 
in  a  wooded  point  seaward,  and  curve  east  and  north 
in  a  succession  of  beaches.  It  is  on  the  point,  and 
mainly  short  of  its  wooded  extremity,  that  the  cottages 
of  our  settlement  are  dropped,  as  near  the  ocean  as 
may  be,  and  with  as  little  order  as  birds'  nests  in  the 
grass,  among  the  sweet-fern,  laurel,  bay,  wild  rasp 
berries,  and  dog-roses,  which  it  is  the  ideal  to  leave 
as  untouched  as  possible.  Wheel-worn  lanes  that 
twist  about  among  the  hollows  find  the  cottages  from 
the  highway,  but  foot-paths  approach  one  cottage 
from  another,  and  people  walk  rather  than  drive  to 
each  other's  doors. 

From  the  deep-bosomed,  well-sheltered  little  harbor 
the  tides  swim  inland,  half  a  score  of  winding  miles, 
up  the  channel  of  a  river  which  without  them  would 
be  a  trickling  rivulet.  An  irregular  line  of  cottages 
follows  the  shore  a  little  way,  and  then  leaves  the  river 
to  the  schooners  and  barges  which  navigate  it  as  far 
as  the  oldest  pile-built  wooden  bridge  in  New  Eng 
land,  and  these  in  their  turn  abandon  it  to  the  fleets 
of  row-boats  and  canoes  in  which  summer  youth  of 
both  sexes  explore  it  to  its  source  over  depths  as  clear 
as  glass,  past  wooded  headlands  and  low,  rush-bor 
dered  meadows,  through  reachevS  and  openings  of  pas 
toral  fields,  and  under  the  shadow  of  dreaming  groves. 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER    COLONIST 

If  there  is  anything  lovelier  than  the  scenery  of  this 
gentle  river  I  do  not  know  it ;  and  I  doubt  if  the  sky  is 
purer  and  bluer  in  paradise.  This  seems  to  be  the 
consensus,  tacit  or  explicit,  of  the  youth  who  visit  it, 
and  employ  the  landscape  for  their  picnics  and  their 
water  parties  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  summer. 

The  river  is  very  much  used  for  sunsets  by  the  cot 
tagers  who  live  on  it,  and  who  claim  a  superiority 
through  them  to  the  cottagers  on  the  point.  An  im 
partial  mind  obliges  me  to  say  that  the  sunsets  are  all 
good  in  our  colony;  there  is  no  place  from  which  they 
are  bad;  and  yet  for  a  certain  tragical  sunset,  where 
the  dying  day  bleeds  slowly  into  the  channel  till  it  is 
filled  from  shore  to  shore  with  red  as  far  as  the  eye 
can  reach,  the  river  is  unmatched. 

For  my  own  purposes,  it  is  not  less  acceptable,  how 
ever,  when  the  fog  has  come  in  from  the  sea  like  a  visi 
ble  reverie,  and  blurred  the  whole  valley  with  its  white 
ness1.  I  find  that  particularly  good  to  look  at  from  the 
trolley-car  which  visits  and  revisits  the  river  before 
finally  leaving  it,  with  a  sort  of  desperation,  and  hid 
ing  its  passion  with  a  sudden  plunge  into  the  woods. 


Ill 

The  old  fishing  and  seafaring  village,  which  has 
now  almost  lost  the  recollection  of  its  first  estate  in  its 
absorption  with  the  care  of  the  summer  colony,  was 
sparsely  dropped  along  the  highway  bordering  the 
harbor,  and  the  shores  of  the  river,  where  the  piles  of 
the  time-worn  wharves  are  still  rotting.  A  few  houses 
of  the  past  remain,  but  the  type  of  the  summer  cottage 
has  impressed  itself  upon  all  the  later  building,  and 
the  native  is  passing  architecturally,  if  not  personally, 
into  abeyance.  He  takes  the  situation  philosophical- 

49 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

ly,  and  in  the  season  he  caters  to  the  summer  colony 
not  only  as  the  landlord  of  the  rented  cottages,  and 
the  keeper  of  the  hotels  and  boarding-houses,  but  as 
livery-stableman,  grocer,  butcher,  marketman,  apoth 
ecary,  and  doctor;  there  is  not  one  foreign  accent  in 
any  of  these  callings.  If  the  native  is  a  farmer,  he 
devotes  himself  to  vegetables,  poultry,  eggs,  and  fruit 
for  the  summer  folks,  and  brings  these  supplies  to  their 
doors;  his  children  appear  with  flowers;  and  there  are 
many  proofs  that  he  has  accurately  sized  the  cot 
tagers  up  in  their  tastes  and  fancies,  as  well  as  their 
needs.  I  doubt  if  we  have  sized  him  up  so  well,  or  if 
our  somewhat  conventionalized  ideal  of  him  is  per 
fectly  representative.  He  is,  perhaps,  more  complex 
than  he  seems ;  he  is  certainly  much  more  self-sufficing 
than  might  have  been  expected.  The  summer  folks 
are  the  material  from  which  his  prosperity  is  wrought, 
but  he  is  not  dependent,  and  is  very  far  from  sub 
missive.  As  in  all  right  conditions,  it  is  here  the  em 
ployer  who  asks  for  work,  not  the  employe" ;  and  the 
work  must  be  respectfully  asked  for.  There  are  many 
fables  to  this  effect,  as,  for  instance,  that  of  the  lady 
who  said  to  a  summer  visitor,  critical  of  the  week's 
wash  she  had  brought  home,  "I'll  wash  you  and  I'll 
iron  you,  but  I  won't  take  none  of  your  jaw  "  A  prim 
itive  independence  is  the  keynote  of  the  native  char 
acter,  and  it  suffers  no  infringement,  but  rather  boasts 
itself.  "We're  independent  here,  I  tell  you,"  said  the 
friendly  person  who  consented  to  take  off  the  wire 
door.  "  I  was  down  Bangor  way  doin'  a  piece  of  work, 
and  a  fellow  come  along,  and  says  he,  'I  want  you 
should  hurry  up  on  that  job. '  '  Hello !'  says  I,  '  I  guess 
I'll  pull  out.'  Well,  we  calculate  to  do  our  work,"  he 
added,  with  an  accent  which  sufficiently  implied  that 
their  consciences  needed  no  bossing  in  the  perform 
ance. 

50 


CONFESSIONS   OF  A   SUMMER    COLONIST 

The  native  compliance  with  any  summer-visiting 
request  is  commonly  in  some  such  form  as,  "Well, 
I  don't  know  but  what  I  can/'  or,  "I  guess  there  ain't 
anything  to  hinder  me."  This  compliance  is  so  rare 
ly,  if  ever,  carried  to  the  point  of  domestic  service  that 
it  may  fairly  be  said  that  all  the  domestic  service,  at 
least  of  the  cottagers,  is  imported.  The  natives  will 
wait  at  the  hotel  tables;  they  will  come  in  "to  accom 
modate";  but 'they  will  not  "live  out."  I  was  one 
day  witness  of  the  extreme  failure  of  a  friend  whose 
city  cook  had  suddenly  abandoned  him,  and  who  ap 
plied  to  a  friendly  farmer's  wife  in  the  vain  hope  that 
she  might  help  him  to  some  one  who  would  help  his 
family  out  in  their  strait.  "Why,  there  ain't  a  girl 
in  the  Hollow  that  lives  out!  Why,  if  you  was  sick 
abed,  I  don't  know  as  I  know  anybody  't  you  could  git 
to  set  up  with  you."  The  natives  will  not  live  out 
because  they  cannot  keep  their  self-respect  in  the  con 
ditions  of  domestic  service.  Some  people  laugh  at 
this  self-respect,  but  most  summer  folks  like  it,  as  I 
own  I  do. 

In  our  partly  mythical  estimate  of  the  native  and  his 
relation  to  us,  he  is  imagined  as  holding  a  kind  of  car 
nival  when  we  leave  him  at  the  end  of  the  season,  and 
it  is  believed  that  he  likes  us  to  go  early.  We  have 
had  his  good  offices  at  a  fair  price  all  summer,  but  as 
it  draws  to  a  close  they  are  rendered  more  and  more 
fitfully.  From  some,  perhaps  flattered,  reports  of  the 
happiness  of  the  natives  at  the  departure  of  the  so- 
journers,  I  have  pictured  them  dancing  a  sort  of  faran- 
dole,  and  stretching  with  linked  hands  from  the  far 
thest  summer  cottage  up  the  river  to  the  last  on  the 
wooded  point.  It  is  certain  that  they  get  tired,  and  I 
could  not  blame  them  if  they  were  glad  to  be  rid  of 
their  guests,  and  to  go  back  to  their  own  social  life. 
This  includes  church  festivals  of  divers  kinds,  lectures 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

and  shows,  sleigh  -  rides,  theatricals,  and  reading- 
clubs,  and  a  plentiful  use  of  books  from  the  excellent 
ly  chosen  free  village  library.  They  say  frankly  that 
the  summer  folks  have  no  idea  how  pleasant  it  is  when 
they  are  gone,  and  I  am  sure  that  the  gayeties  to  which 
we  leave  them  must  be  more  tolerable  than  those  which 
we  go  back  to  in  the  city.  It  may  be,  however,  that 
I  am  too  confident,  and  that  their  gayeties  are  only 
different.  I  should  really  like  to  know  just  what  the 
entertainments  are  which  are  given  in  a  building  de 
voted  to  them  in  a  country  neighborhood  three  or  four 
miles  from  the  village.  It  was  once  a  church,  but  is 
now  used  solely  for  social  amusements. 


IV 

The  amusements  of  the  summer  colony  I  have  al 
ready  hinted  at.  Besides  suppers,  there  are  also  teas, 
of  larger  scope,  both  afternoon  and  evening.  There  are 
hops  every  week  at  the  two  largest  hotels,  which  are 
practically  free  to  all ;  and  the  bathing  -  beach  is,  of 
course,  a  supreme  attraction.  The  bath-houses,  which 
are  very  clean  and  well  equipped,  are  not  very  cheap, 
either  for  the  season  or  for  a  single  bath,  and  there 
is  a  pretty  pavilion  at  the  edge  of  the  sands.  This 
is  always  full  of  gossiping  spectators  of  the  hardy 
adventurers  who  brave  tides  too  remote  from  the  Gulf 
Stream  to  be  ever  much  warmer  than  sixty  or  sixty- 
five  degrees.  The  bathers  are  mostly  young  people, 
who  have  the  courage  of  their  pretty  bathing-costumes 
or  the  inextinguishable  ardor  of  their  years.  If  it  is 
not  rather  serious  business  with  them  all,  still  I  admire 
the  fortitude  with  which  some  of  them  remain  in  fif 
teen  minutes. 

Beyond  our  colony,  which  calls  itself  the  Port,  there 

52 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER    COLONIST 

is  a  far  more  populous  watering-place,  east  of  the  Point, 
known  as  the  Beach,  which  is  the  resort  of  people  sev 
eral  grades  of  gentility  lower  than  ours:  so  many,  in 
fact,  that  we  never  can  speak  of  the  Beach  without 
averting  our  faces,  or,  at  the  best,  with  a  tolerant  smile. 
It  is  really  a  succession  of  beaches,  all  much  longer 
and,  I  am  bound  to  say,  more  beautiful  than  ours, 
lined  with  rows  of  the  humbler  sort  of  summer  cot 
tages  known  as  shells,  and  with  many  hotels  of  cor 
responding  degree.  The  cottages  may  be  hired  by 
the  week  or  month  at  about  two  dollars  a  day,  and  they 
are  supposed  to  be  taken  by  inland  people  of  little  so 
cial  importance.  Very  likely  this  is  true;  but  they 
seemed  to  be  very  nice,  quiet  people,  and  I  commonly 
saw  the  ladies  reading,  on  their  verandas,  books  and 
magazines,  while  the  gentlemen  sprayed  the  dusty 
road  before  them  with  the  garden  hose.  The  place 
had  also  for  me  an  agreeable  alien  suggestion,  and  in 
passing  the  long  row  of  cottages  I  was  slightly  remind 
ed  of  Scheveningen. 

Beyond  the  cottage  settlements  is  a  struggling  little 
park,  dedicated  to  the  only  Indian  saint  I  ever  heard 
of,  though  there  may  be  others.  His  statue,  colossal 
in  sheet-lead,  and  painted  the  copper  color  of  his  race, 
offers  any  heathen  comer  the  choice  between  a  Bible 
in  one  of  his  hands  and  a  tomahawk  in  the  other,  at 
the  entrance  of  the  park;  and  there  are  other  sheet- 
lead  groups  and  figures  in  the  white  of  allegory  at 
different  points.  It  promises  to  be  a  pretty  enough 
little  place  in  future  years,  but  as  yet  it  is  not  much 
resorted  to  by  the  excursions  which  largely  form  the 
prosperity  of  the  Beach.  The  concerts  and  the  "high- 
class  vaudeville  "  promised  have  not  flourished  in  the 
pavilion  provided  for  them,  and  one  of  two  monkeys 
in  the  zoological  department  has  perished  of  the  pub 
lic  inattention.  This  has  not  fatally  affected  the 

53 


LITERATURE    AND    LIFE 

captive  bear,  who  rises  to  his  hind  legs,  and  eats  pea 
nuts  and  doughnuts  in  that  position  like  a  fellow-citi 
zen.  With  the  cockatoos  and  parrots,  and  the  dozen 
deer  in  an  inclosure  of  wire  netting,  he  is  no  mean 
attraction;  but  he  does  not  charm  the  excursionists 
away  from  the  summer  village  at  the  shore,  where 
they  spend  long  afternoons  splashing  among  the  waves, 
or  in  lolling  groups  of  men,  women,  and  children 
on  the  sand.  In  the  more  active  gayeties,  I  have 
seen  nothing  so  decided  during  the  whole  season  as 
the  behavior  of  three  young  girls  who  once  came  up 
out  of  the  sea,  and  obliged  me  by  dancing  a  measure 
on  the  smooth,  hard  beach  in  their  bathing-dresses. 


I  thought  it  very  pretty,  but  I  do  not  believe  such  a 
thing  could  have  been  seen  on  our  beach,  which  is  safe 
from  all  excursionists,  and  sacred  to  the  cottage  and 
hotel  life  of  the  Port. 

Besides  our  beach  and  its  bathing,  we  have  a  read 
ing-club  for  the  men,  evolved  from  one  of  the  old  na 
tive  houses,  and  verandaed  round  for  summer  use; 
and  we  have  golf-links  and  a  golf  club-house  within 
easy  trolley  reach.  The  links  are  as  energetically, 
if  not  as  generally,  frequented  as  the  sands,  and  the 
sport  finds  the  favor  which  attends  it  everywhere  in 
the  decay  of  tennis.  The  tennis-courts  which  I  saw 
thronged  about  by  eager  girl-crowds,  here,  seven  years 
ago,  are  now  almost  wholly  abandoned  to  the  lovers 
of  the  game,  who  are  nearly  always  men. 

Perhaps  the  only  thing  (besides,  of  course,  our  com 
mon  mortality)  which  we  have  in  common  with  the 
excursionists  is  our  love  of  the  trolley-line.  This,  by 
its  admirable  equipment,  and  by  the  terror  it  inspires 

54 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER    COLONIST 

in  horses,  has  wellnigh  abolished  driving;  and  fol 
lowing  the  old  country  roads,  as  it  does,  with  an  occa 
sional  short-cut  through  the  deep,  green-lighted  woods 
or  across  the  prismatic  salt  meadows,  it  is  of  a  pict 
uresque  variety  entirely  satisfying.  After  a  year  of 
fervent  opposition  and  protest,  the  whole  community 
— \vhether  of  summer  or  of  winter  folks — now  gladly 
accepts  the  trolley,  and  the  grandest  cottager  and  the 
lowliest  hotel  dweller  meet  in  a  grateful  appreciation 
of  its  beauty  and  comfort. 

Some  pass  a  great  part  of  every  afternoon  on  the 
trolley,  and  one  lady  has  achieved  celebrity  by  spend 
ing  four  dollars  a  week  in  trolley-rides.  The  exhil 
aration  of  these  is  varied  with  an  occasional  appre 
hension  when  the  car  pitches  down  a  sharp  incline, 
and  twists  almost  at  right  angles  on  a  sudden  curve 
at  the  bottom  without  slacking  its  speed.  A  lady 
who  ventured  an  appeal  to  the  conductor  at  one  such 
crisis  was  reassured,  and  at  the  same  time  taught  her 
place,  by  his  reply:  "That  motorman's  life,  ma'am, 
is  just  as  precious  to  him  as  what  yours  is  to 
you." 

She  had,  perhaps,  really  ventured  too  far,  for  or 
dinarily  the  employe's  of  the  trolley  do  not  find  occa 
sion  to  use  so  much  severity  with  their  passengers. 
They  look  after  their  comfort  as  far  as  possible,  and 
seek  even  to  anticipate  their  wants  in  unexpected  cases, 
if  I  may  believe  a  story  which  was  told  by  a  witness. 
She  had  long  expected  to  see  some  one  thrown  out 
of  the  open  car  at  one  of  the  sharp  curves,  and  one 
day  she  actually  saw  a  woman  hurled  from  the  seat 
into  the  road.  Luckily  the  woman  alighted  on  her 
feet,  and  stood  looking  round  in  a  daze. 

"Oh!  oh!"  exclaimed  another  woman  in  the  seat 
behind,  "she's  left  her  umbrella!" 

The  conductor  promptly  threw  it  out  to  her, 

55 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

"Why/'  demanded  the  witness,  "did  that  lady  urish 
to  get  out  here?" 

The  conductor  hesitated  before  he  jerked  the  bell- 
pull  to  go  on.  Then  he  said,  "Well,  she'll  want  her 
umbrella,  anyway." 

The  conductors  are,  in  fact,  very  civil  as  well  as  kind. 
If  they  see  a  horse  in  anxiet}?-  at  the  approach  of  the 
car,  they  considerately  stop,  and  let  him  get  by  with 
his  driver  in  safety.  By  such  means,  with  their  fre 
quent  trips  and  low  fares,  and  with  the  ease  and  com 
fort  of  their  cars,  they  have  conciliated  public  favor, 
and  the  trolley  has  drawn  travel  away  from  the  steam 
railroad  in  such  measure  that  it  ran  no  trains  last 
winter. 

VI 

The  trolley,  in  fact,  is  a  fad  of  the  summer  folks 
this  year;  but  what  it  will  be  another  no  one  knows; 
it  may  be  their  hissing  and  by-word.  In  the  mean 
time,  as  I  have  already  suggested,  they  have  other 
amusements.  These  are  not  always  of  a  nature  so 
general  as  the  trolley,  or  so  particular  as  the  tea.  But 
each  of  the  larger  hotels  has  been  fully  supplied  with 
entertainments  for  the  benefit  of  their  projectors,  though 
nearly  everything  of  the  sort  had  some  sort  of  char 
itable  slant.  I  assisted  at  a  stereopticon  lecture  on 
Alaska  for  the  aid  of  some  youthful  Alaskans  of  both 
sexes,  who  were  shown  first  in  their  savage  state,  and 
then  as  they  appeared  after  a  merely  rudimental  edu 
cation,  in  the  costumes  and  profiles  of  our  own  civili 
zation.  I  never  would  have  supposed  that  education 
could  do  so  much  in  so  short  a  time;  and  I  gladly 
gave  my  mite  for  their  further  development  in  classic 
beauty  and  a  final  elegance.  My  mite  was  taken  up 
in  a  hat,  which,  passed  round  among  the  audience, 

56 


CONFESSIONS    OF   A    SUMMER   COLONIST 

is  a  common  means  of  collecting  the  spectators'  ex 
pressions  of  appreciation.  Other  entertainments,  of  a 
prouder  frame,  exact  an  admission  fee,  but  I  am  not 
sure  that  these  are  better  than  some  of  the  hat-shows, 
as  they  are  called. 

The  tale  of  our  summer  amusements  would  be  sadly 
incomplete  without  some  record  of  the  bull-fights  given 
by  the  Spanish  prisoners  of  war  on  the  neighboring 
island,  where  they  were  confined  the  year  of  the  war. 
Admission  to  these  could  be  had  only  by  favor  of  the 
officers  in  charge,  and  even  among  the  elite  of  the  col 
ony  those  who  went  were  a  more  elect  few.  Still,  the 
day  I  went,  there  were  some  fifty  or  seventy-five  spec 
tators,  who  arrived  by  trolley  near  the  island,  and 
walked  to  the  stockade  which  confined  the  captives. 
A  real  bull-fight,  I  believe,  is  always  given  on  Sunday, 
and  Puritan  prejudice  yielded  to  usage  even  in  the 
case  of  a  burlesque  bull-fight;  at  any  rate,  it  was  on 
a  Sunday  that  we  crouched  in  an  irregular  semicircle 
on  a  rising  ground  within  the  prison  pale,  and  faced 
the  captive  audience  in  another  semicircle,  across  a 
little  alley  for  the  entrances  and  exits  of  the  perform 
ers.  The  president  of  the  bull-fight  was  first  brought 
to  the  place  of  honor  in  a  hand-cart,  and  then  came 
the  banderilleros,  the  picadores,  and  the  espada,  won 
derfully  effective  and  correct  in  white  muslin  and 
colored  tissue-paper.  Much  may  be  done  in  personal 
decoration  with  advertising  placards;  and  the  lofty 
mural  crown  of  the  president  urged  the  public  on  both 
sides  to  Use  Plug  Cut.  The  picador's  pasteboard 
horse  was  attached  to  his  middle,  fore  and  aft,  and 
looked  quite  the  sort  of  hapless  jade  which  is  or 
dinarily  sacrificed  to  the  bulls.  The  toro  himself  was 
composed  of  two  prisoners,  whose  horizontal  backs  were 
covered  with  a  brown  blanket;  and  his  feet,  sometimes 
bare  and  sometimes  shod  with  india-rubber  boots,  were 

57 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

of  the  human  pattern.  Practicable  horns,  of  a  some 
what  too  yielding  substance,  branched  from  a  front  of 
pasteboard,  and  a  cloth  tail,  apt  to  come  off  in  the 
charge,  swung  from  his  rear.  I  have  never  seen  a 
genuine  corrida,  but  a  lady  present,  who  had,  told  me 
that  this  was  conducted  with  all  the  right  circum 
stance;  and  it  is  certain  that  the  performers  entered 
into  their  parts  with  the  artistic  gust  of  their  race. 
The  picador  sustained  some  terrific  falls,  and  in  his 
quality  of  horse  had  to  be  taken  out  repeatedly  and 
sewed  up;  the  banderilleros  tormented  and  eluded  the 
toro  with  table-covers,  one  red  and  two  drab,  till  the 
espada  took  him  from  them,  and  with  due  ceremony, 
after  a  speech  to  the  president,  drove  his  blade  home 
to  the  bull's  heart.  I  stayed  to  see  three  bulls  killed; 
the  last  was  uncommonly  fierce,  and  when  his  hind 
quarters  came  off  or  out,  his  forequarters  charged 
joyously  among  the  aficionados  on  the  prisoners'  side, 
and  made  havoc  in  their  thickly  packed  ranks.  The 
espada  who  killed  this  bull  was  showered  with  cigars 
and  cigarettes  from  our  side. 

I  do  not  know  what  the  Sabbath-keeping  shades  of 
the  old  Puritans  made  of  our  presence  at  such  a  fete 
on  Sunday;  but  possibly  they  had  got  on  so  far  in  a 
better  life  as  to  be  less  shocked  at  the  decay  of  piety 
among  us  than  pleased  at  the  rise  of  such  Christianity 
as  had  brought  us,  like  friends  and  comrades,  together 
with  our  public  enemies  in  this  harmless  fun.  I  wish 
to  say  that  the  tobacco  lavished  upon  the  espada  was 
collected  for  the  behoof  of  all  the  prisoners. 


VII 

Our  fiction  has  made  so  much  of  our  summer  places 
as  the  mise  en  scene  of  its  love  stories  that  I  suppose 

58 


IN    WHATEVER    SORT    OUR   COLONISTS    AMUSE   THEMSELVES,    IT    IS 
WITH    THE   LEAST    POSSIBLE   CEREMONY7' 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER   COLONIST 

I  ought  to  say  something  of  this  side  of  our  colonial 
life.  But  after  sixty  I  suspect  that  one's  eyes  are 
poor  for  that  sort  of  thing,  and  I  can  only  say  that  in 
its  earliest  and  simplest  epoch  the  Port  was  particu 
larly  famous  for  the  good  times  that  the  young  people 
had.  They  still  have  good  times,  though  whether  on 
just  the  old  terms  I  do  not  know.  I  know  that  the 
river  is  still  here  with  its  canoes  and  row-boats,  its 
meadowy  reaches  apt  for  dual  solitude,  and  its  groves 
for  picnics.  There  is  not  much  bicycling — the  roads 
are  rough  and  hilly — but  there  is  something  of  it,  and 
it  is  mighty  pretty  to  see  the  youth  of  both  sexes 
bicycling  with  their  heads  bare.  They  go  about  bare 
headed  on  foot  and  in  buggies,  too,  and  the  young 
girls  seek  the  tan  which  their  mothers  used  so  anx 
iously  to  shun. 

The  sail-boats,  manned  by  weather-worn  and  weath 
er-wise  skippers,  are  rather  for  the  pleasure  of  such 
older  summer  folks  as  have  a  taste  for  cod-fishing, 
which  is  here  very  good.  But  at  every  age,  and  in 
whatever  sort  our  colonists  amuse  themselves,  it  is 
with  the  least  possible  ceremony.  It  is  as  if,  Nature 
having  taken  them  so  hospitably  to  her  heart,  they 
felt  convention  an  affront  to  her.  Around  their  cot 
tages,  as  I  have  said,  they  prefer  to  leave  her  primi 
tive  beauty  untouched,  and  she  rewards  their  for 
bearance  with  such  a  profusion  of  wild  flowers  as  I 
have  seen  nowhere  else.  The  low,  pink  laurel  flushed 
all  the  stony  fields  to  the  edges  of  their  verandas  when 
we  first  came;  the  meadows  were  milk-white  with 
daisies;  in  the  swampy  places  delicate  orchids  grew, 
in  the  pools  the  flags  and  flowering  rushes;  all  the 
paths  and  way-sides  were  set  with  dog-roses ;  the  hol 
lows  and  stony  tops  were  broadly  matted  with  ground 
juniper.  Since  then  the  golden-rod  has  passed  from 
glory  to  glory,  first  mixing  its  yellow-powdered  plumes 

59 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

with  the  red-purple  tufts  of  the  iron-weed,  and  then 
with  the  wild  asters  everywhere.  There  has  come 
later  a  dwarf  sort,  six  or  ten  inches  high,  wonderfully 
rich  and  fine,  which,  with  a  low,  white  aster,  seems  to 
hold  the  field  against  everything  else,  though  the  tall 
er  golden-rod  and  the  masses  of  the  high,  blue  asters 
nod  less  thickly  above  it.  But  these  smaller  blooms 
deck  the  ground  in  incredible  profusion,  and  have 
an  innocent  air  of  being  stuck  in,  as  if  they  had 
been  fancifully  used  for  ornament  by  children  or  Ind 
ians. 

In  a  little  while  now,  as  it  is  almost  the  end  of  Sep 
tember,  all  the  feathery  gold  will  have  faded  to  the 
soft,  pale  ghosts  of  that  loveliness.  The  summer  birds 
have  long  been  silent;  the  crows,  as  if  they  were  so 
many  exultant  natives,  are  shouting  in  the  blue  sky 
above  the  windrows  of  the  rowan,  in  jubilant  prescience 
of  the  depopulation  of  our  colony,  which  fled  the  hotels 
a  fortnight  ago.  The  days  are  growing  shorter,  and 
the  red  evenings  falling  earlier ;  so  that  the  cottagers' 
husbands  who  come  up  every  Saturday  from  town 
might  well  be  impatient  for  a  Monday  of  final  return. 
Those  who  came  from  remoter  distances  have  gone 
back  already ;  and  the  lady  cottagers,  lingering  hardily 
on  till  October,  must  find  the  sight  of  the  empty  hotels 
and  the  windows  of  the  neighboring  houses,  which  no 
longer  brighten  after  the  chilly  nightfall,  rather  de 
pressing.  Every  one  says  that  this  is  the  loveliest 
time  of  year,  and  that  it  will  be  divine  here  all  through 
October.  But  there  are  sudden  and  unexpected  de 
fections;  there  is  a  steady  pull  of  the  heart  cityward, 
which  it  is  hard  to  resist.  The  first  great  exodus  was 
on  the  first  of  the  month,  when  the  hotels  were  deserted 
by  four-fifths  of  their  guests.  The  rest  followed,  half 
of  them  within  the  week,  and  within  a  fortnight  none 
but  an  all  but  inaudible  and  invisible  remnant  were 

60 


CONFESSIONS   OF   A   SUMMER   COLONIST 

left,  who  made  no  impression  of  summer  sojourn  in 
the  deserted  trolleys. 

The  days  now  go  by  in  moods  of  rapid  succession. 
There  have  been  days  when  the  sea  has  lain  smiling 
in  placid  derision  of  the  recreants  who  have  fled  the 
lingering  summer;  there  have  been  nights  when  the 
winds  have  roared  round  the  cottages  in  wild  menace 
of  the  faithful  few  who  have  remained. 

We  have  had  a  magnificent  storm,  which  came, 
as  an  equinoctial  storm  should,  exactly  at  the  equinox, 
and  for  a  day  and  a  night  heaped  the  sea  upon  the 
shore  in  thundering  surges  twenty  and  thirty  feet 
high.  I  watched  these  at  their  awfulest,  from  the' 
wide  windows  of  a  cottage  that  crouched  in  the  very 
edge  of  the  surf,  with  the  effect  of  clutching  the  rocks 
with  one  hand  and  holding  its  roof  on  with  the  other. 
The  sea  was  such  a  sight  as  I  have  not  seen  on  ship 
board,  and  while  I  luxuriously  shuddered  at  it,  I  had 
the  advantage  of  a  mellow  log-fire  at  my  back,  purring 
and  softly  crackling  in  a  quiet  indifference  to  the  storm. 

Twenty-four  hours  more  made  all  serene  again. 
Blood-curdling  tales  of  lobster-pots  carried  to  sea  filled 
the  air;  but  the  air  was  as  blandly  unconscious  of 
ever  having  been  a  fury  as  a  lady  who  has  found 
her  lost  temper.  Swift  alternations  of  weather  are  so 
characteristic  of  our  colonial  climate  that  the  other 
afternoon  I  went  out  with  my  umbrella  against  the  raw, 
cold  rain  of  the  morning,  and  had  to  raise  it  against 
the  broiling  sun.  Three  days  ago  I  could  say  that  the 
green  of  the  woods  had  no  touch  of  hectic  in  it;  but 
already  the  low  trees  of  the  swamp-land  have  flamed 
into  crimson.  Every  morning,  when  I  look  out,  this 
crimson  is  of  a  fierier  intensity,  and  the  trees  on  the 
distant  uplands  are  beginning  slowly  to  kindle,  with 
a  sort  of  inner  glow  which  has  not  yet  burst  into  a 
blaze.  Here  and  there  the  golden-rod  is  rusting;  but 

61 


LITERATURE  AND    LIFE 

there  seems  only  to  be  more  and  more  asters  of  all 
sorts ;  and  I  have  seen  ladies  coming  home  with  sheaves 
of  blue  gentians;  I  have  heard  that  the  orchids  are 
beginning  again  to  light  their  tender  lamps  from  the 
burning  blackberry  vines  that  stray  from  the  past 
ures  to  the  edge  of  the  swamps. 

After  an  apparently  total  evanescence  there  has 
been  a  like  resuscitation  of  the  spirit  of  summer  so 
ciety.  In  the  very  last  week  of  September  we  have 
gone  to  a  supper,  which  lingered  far  out  of  its  season 
like  one  of  these  late  flowers,  and  there  has  been  an 
afternoon  tea  which  assembled  an  astonishing  number 
of  cottagers,  all  secretly  surprised  to  find  one  another 
still  here,  and  professing  openly  a  pity  tinged  with 
contempt  for  those  who  are  here  no  longer. 

I  blamed  those  who  had  gone  home,  but  I  myself 
sniff  the  asphalt  afar;  the  roar  of  the  street  calls  to 
me  with  the  magic  that  the  voice  of  the  sea  is  losing. 
Just  now  it  shines  entreatingly,  it  shines  winningly, 
in  the  sun  which  is  mellowing  to  an  October  tender 
ness,  and  it  shines  under  a  moon  of  perfect  orb,  which 
seems  to  have  the  whole  heavens  to  itself  in  "  the  first 
watch  of  the  night/'  except  for  "the  red  planet  Mars." 
This  begins  to  burn  in  the  west  before  the  flush  of  sun 
set  has  passed  from  it;  and  then,  later,  a  few  moon- 
washed  stars  pierce  the  vast  vault  with  their  keen 
points.  The  stars  which  so  powdered  the  summer 
sky  seem  mostly  to  have  gone  back  to  town,  where  no 
doubt  people  take  them  for  electric  lights. 


THE   EDITOR'S   RELATIONS  WITH   THE  YOUNG 
CONTRIBUTOR 

ONE  of  the  trustiest  jokes  of  the  humorous  para- 
grapher  is  that  the  editor  is  in  great  and  con 
stant  dread  of  the  young  contributor;  but  neither  my 
experience  nor  my  observation  bears  out  his  theory 
of  the  case. 

Of  course  one  must  not  say  anything  to  encourage 
a  young  person  to  abandon  an  honest  industry  in  the 
vain  hope  of  early  honor  and  profit  from  literature; 
but  there  have  been  and  there  will  be  literary  men  and 
women  always,  and  these  in  the  beginning  have  near 
ly  always  been  young;  and  I  cannot  see  that  there  is 
risk  of  any  serious  harm  in  saying  that  it  is  to  the 
young  contributor  the  editor  looks  for  rescue  from  the 
old  contributor,  or  from  his  failing  force  and  charm. 

The  chances,  naturally,  are  against  the  young 
contributor,  and  vastly  against  him;  but  if  any  peri 
odical  is  to  live,  and  to  live  long,  it  is  by  the  infusion 
of  new  blood;  and  nobody  knows  this  better  than  the 
editor,  who  may  seem  so  unfriendly  and  uncareful  to 
the  young  contributor.  The  strange  voice,  the  novel 
scene,  the  odor  of  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new,  the 
breath  of  morning,  the  dawn  of  to-morrow — these  are 
what  the  editor  is  eager  for,  if  he  is  fit  to  be  an  editor 
at  all ;  and  these  are  what  the  young  contributor  alone 
can  give  him. 

A  man  does  not  draw  near  the  sixties  without  wish 
ing  people  to  believe  that  he  is  as  young  as  ever,  and 

63 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

he  has  not  written  almost  as  many  books  as  he  has  lived 
years  without  persuading  himself  that  each  new  work 
of  his  has  all  the  surprise  of  spring ;  but  possibly  there 
are  wonted  traits  and  familiar  airs  and  graces  in  it 
which  forbid  him  to  persuade  others.  I  do  not  say 
these  characteristics  are  not  charming;  I  am  very  far 
from  wishing  to  say  that;  but  I  do  say  and  must  say 
that  after  the  fiftieth  time  they  do  not  charm  for  the 
first  time;  and  this  is  where  the  advantage  of  the  new 
contributor  lies,  if  he  happens  to  chajm  at  all. 


The  new  contributor  who  does  charm  can  have  lit 
tle  notion  how  much  he  charms  his  first  reader,  who 
is  the  editor.  That  functionary  may  hide  his  pleas 
ure  in  a  short,  stiff  note  of  acceptance,  or  he  may  mask 
his  joy  in  a  check  of  slender  figure;  but  the  contribu 
tor  may  be  sure  that  he  has  missed  no  merit  in  his 
work,  and  that  he  has  felt,  perhaps  far  more  than  the 
public  will  feel,  such  delight  as  it  can  give. 

The  contributor  may  take  the  acceptance  as  a  token 
that  his  efforts  have  not  been  neglected,  and  that  his 
achievements  will  always  be  warmly  welcomed;  that 
even  his  failures  will  be  leniently  and  reluctantly 
recognized  as  failures,  and  that  he  must  persist  long 
in  failure  before  the  friend  he  has  made  will  finally 
forsake  him. 

I  do  not  wish  to  paint  the  situation  wholly  rose  col 
or;  the  editor  will  have  his  moods,  when  he  will  not 
see  so  clearly  or  judge  so  justly  as  at  other  times ;  when 
he  will  seem  exacting  and  fastidious,  and  will  want 
this  or  that  mistaken  thing  done  to  the  story,  or  poem, 
or  sketch,  which  the  author  knows  to  be  simply  per 
fect  as  it  stands;  but  he  is  worth  bearing  with,  and 


THE   EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

he  will  be  constant  to  the  new  contributor  as  long  as 
there  is  the  least  hope  of  him. 

The  contributor  may  be  the  man  or  the  woman  of 
one  story,  one  poem,  one  sketch,  for  there  are  such; 
but  the  editor  will  wait  the  evidence  of  indefinite  fail 
ure  to  this  effect.  His  hope  always  is  that  he  or  she 
is  the  man  or  the  woman  of  many  stories,  many  poems, 
many  sketches,  all  as  good  as  the  first. 

From  my  own  long  experience  as  a  magazine  editor, 
I  may  say  that  the  editor  is  more  doubtful  of  failure 
in  one  who  has  once  done  well  than  of  a  second  suc 
cess.  After  all,  the  writer  who  can  do  but  one  good 
thing  is  rarer  than  people  are  apt  to  think  in  their  love 
of  the  improbable;  but  the  real  danger  with  a  young 
contributor  is  that  he  may  become  his  own  rival. 

What  would  have  been  quite  good  enough  from  him 
in  the  first  instance  is  not  good  enough  in  the  second, 
because  he  has  himself  fixed  his  standard  so  high. 
His  only  hope  is  to  surpass  himself,  and  not  begin 
resting  on  his  laurels  too  soon;  perhaps  it  is  never 
well,  soon  or  late,  to  rest  upon  one's  laurels.  It  is  well 
for  one  to  make  one's  self  scarce,  and  the  best  way  to 
do  this  is  to  be  more  and  more  jealous  of  perfection  in 
one's  work. 

The  editor's  conditions  are  that  having  found  a 
good  thing  he  must  get  as  much  of  it  as  he  can,  and 
the  chances  are  that  he  will  be  less  exacting  than  the 
contributor  imagines.  It  is  for  the  contributor  to  be 
exacting,  and  to  let  nothing  go  to  the  editor  as  long 
as  there  is  the  possibility  of  making  it  better.  He 
need  not  be  afraid  of  being  forgotten  because  he  does 
not  keep  sending;  the  editor's  memory  is  simply  re 
lentless;  he  could  not  forget  the  writer  who  has  pleased 
him  if  he  would,  for  such  writers  are  few. 

I  do  not  believe  that  in  my  editorial  service  on  the 
Atlantic  Monthly,  which  lasted  fifteen  years  in  all,  I 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

forgot  the  name  or  the  characteristic  quality,  or  even 
the  handwriting,  of  a  contributor  who  had  pleased 
me,  and  I  forgot  thousands  who  did  not.  I  never  lost 
faith  in  a  contributor  who  had  done  a  good  thing;  to 
the  end  I  expected  another  good  thing  from  him.  I 
think  I  was  always  at  least  as  patient  with  him  as  he 
was  with  me,  though  he  may  not  have  known  it. 

At  the  time  I  was  connected  with  that  periodical  it 
had  almost  a  monopoly  of  the  work  of  Longfellow, 
Emerson,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Whittier,  Mrs.  Stowe,  Park- 
man,  Higginson,  Aldrich,  Stedman,  and  many  others 
not  so  well  known,  but  still  well  known.  These  dis 
tinguished  writers  were  frequent  contributors,  and 
they  could  be  counted  upon  to  respond  to  almost  any 
appeal  of  the  magazine;  yet  the  constant  effort  of  the 
editors  was  to  discover  new  talent,  and  their  wish  was 
to  welcome  it. 

I  know  that,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  the  success 
of  a  young  contributor  was  as  precious  as  if  I  had  my 
self  written  his  paper  or  poem,  and  I  doubt  if  it  gave 
him  more  pleasure.  The  editor  is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of 
second  self  for  the  contributor,  equally  eager  that  he 
should  stand  well  with  the  public,  and  able  to  pro 
mote  his  triumphs  without  egotism  and  share  them 
without  vanity. 

II 

In  fact,  my  curious  experience  was  that  if  the  pub 
lic  seemed  not  to  feel  my  delight  in  a  contribution  I 
thought  good,  my  vexation  and  disappointment  were 
as  great  as  if  the  work  had  been  my  own.  It  was  even 
greater,  for  if  I  had  really  written  it  I  might  have  had 
my  misgivings  of  its  merit,  but  in  the  case  of  another 
I  could  not  console  myself  with  this  doubt.  The  sen- 
.timent  was  at  the  same  time  one  which  I  could  not 

66 


THE   EDITOR   AND   YOUNG    CONTRIBUTOR 

cherish  for  the  work  of  an  old  contributor;  such  a  one 
stood  more  upon  his  own  feet ;  and  the  young  contribu 
tor  may  be  sure  that  the  editor's  pride,  self-interest, 
and  sense  of  editorial  infallibility  will  all  prompt  him 
to  stand  by  the  author  whom  he  has  introduced  to  the 
public,  and  whom  he  has  vouched  for. 

I  hope  I  am  not  giving  the  young  contributor  too 
high  an  estimate  of  his  value  to  the  editor.  After  all, 
he  must  remember  that  he  is  but  one  of  a  great  many 
others,  and  that  the  editor's  affections,  if  constant,  are 
necessarily  divided.  It  is  good  for  the  literary  aspi 
rant  to  realize  very  early  that  he  is  but  one  of  many ; 
for  the  vice  of  our  comparatively  virtuous  craft  is  that 
it  tends  to  make  each  of  us  imagine  himself  central, 
if  not  sole. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  universe  does  not 
revolve  around  any  one  of  us ;  we  make  our  circuit  of 
the  sun  along  with  the  other  inhabitants  of  the  earth, 
a  planet  of  inferior  magnitude.  The  thing  we  strive 
for  is  recognition,  but  when  this  comes  it  is  apt  to  turn 
our  heads.  I  should  say,  then,  that  it  was  better  it 
should  not  come  in  a  great  glare  and  a  loud  shout,  all 
at  once,  but  should  steal  slowly  upcn  us,  ray  by  ray, 
breath  by  breath. 

In  the  mean  time,  if  this  happens,  we  shall  have 
several  chances  of  reflection,  and  can  ask  ourselves 
whether  we  are  really  so  great  as  we  seem  to  other 
people,  or  seem  to  seem. 

The  prime  condition  of  good  work  is  that  we  shall 
get  ourselves  out  of  our  minds.  Sympathy  we  need, 
of  course,  and  encouragement ;  but  I  am  not  sure  that 
the  lack  of  these  is  not  a  very  good  thing,  too.  Praise 
enervates,  flattery  poisons;  but  a  smart,  brisk  snub 
is  always  rather  wholesome. 

I  should  say  that  it  was  not  at  all  a  bad  thing  for 
a  young  contributor  to  get  his  manuscript  back,  even 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

after  a  first  acceptance,  and  even  a  general  newspa 
per  proclamation  that  he  is  one  to  make  the  immor 
tals  tremble  for  their  wreaths  of  asphodel — or  is  it 
amaranth?  I  am  never  sure  which. 

Of  course  one  must  have  one's  hour,  or  day,  or  week, 
of  disabling  the  editor's  judgment,  of  calling  him  to 
one's  self  fool,  and  rogue,  and  wretch ;  but  after  that, 
if  one  is  worth  while  at  all,  one  puts  the  rejected  thing 
by,  or  sends  it  off  to  some  other  magazine,  and  sets 
about  the  capture  of  the  erring  editor  with  something 
better,  or  at  least  something  else. 


Ill 

I  think  it  a  great  pity  that  editors  ever  deal  other 
than  frankly  with  young  contributors,  or  put  them 
off  with  smooth  generalities  of  excuse,  instead  of  say 
ing  they  do  not  like  this  thing  or  that  offered  them. 
It  is  impossible  to  make  a  criticism  of  all  rejected  man 
uscripts,  but  in  the  case  of  those  which  show  prom 
ise  I  think  it  is  quite  possible;  and  if  I  were  to  sin  my 
sins  over  again,  I  think  I  should  sin  a  little  more  on 
the  side  of  candid  severity.  I  am  sure  I  should  do 
more  good  in  that  way,  and  I  am  sure  that  when  I 
used  to  dissemble  my  real  mind  I  did  harm  to  those 
whose  feelings  I  wished  to  spare.  There  ought  not, 
in  fact,  to  be  question  of  feeling  in  the  editor's 
mind. 

I  know  from  much  suffering  of  my  own  that  it  is 
terrible  to  get  back  a  manuscript,  but  it  is  not  fatal, 
or  I  should  have  been  dead  a  great  many  times  before 
I  was  thirty,  when  the  thing  mostly  ceased  for  me. 
One  survives  it  again  and  again,  and  one  ought  to 
make  the  reflection  that  it  is  not  the  first  business  of 
a  periodical  to  print  contributions  of  this  one  or  of 

68 


THE   EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

that,  but  that  its  first  business  is  to  amuse  and  in 
struct  its  readers. 

To  do  this  it  is  necessary  to  print  contributions, 
but  whose  they  are,  or  how  the  writer  will  feel  if  they 
are  not  printed,  cannot  be  considered.  The  editor 
can  consider  only  what  they  are,  and  the  young  con 
tributor  will  do  well  to  consider  that,  although  the 
editor  may  not  be  an  infallible  judge,  or  quite  a  good 
judge,  it  is  his  business  to  judge,  and  to  judge  without 
mercy.  Mercy  ought  no  more  to  qualify  judgment 
in  an  artistic  result  than  in  a  mathematical  result. 


IV 

I  suppose,  since  I  used  to  have  it  myself,  that  there 
is  a  superstition  with  most  young  contributors  con 
cerning  their  geographical  position.  I  used  to  think 
that  it  was  a  disadvantage  to  send  a  thing  from  a  small 
or  unknown  place,  and  that  it  doubled  my  insignifi 
cance  to  do  so.  I  believed  that  if  my  envelope  had 
borne  the  postmark  of  New  York,  or  Boston,  or  some 
other  city  of  literary  distinction,  it  would  have  arrived 
on  the  editor's  table  with  a  great  deal  more  authority. 
But  I  am  sure  this  was  a  mistake  from  the  first,  and 
when  I  came  to  be  an  editor  myself  I  constantly  veri 
fied  the  fact  from  my  own  dealings  with  contributors. 

A  contribution  from  a  remote  and  obscure  place  at 
once  piqued  my  curiosity,  and  I  soon  learned  that  the 
fresh  things,  the  original  things,  were  apt  to  come 
from  such  places,  and  not  from  the  literary  centres. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  facts  concerning  the 
arts  of  all  kinds  is  that  those  who  wish  to  give  their 
lives  to  them  do  not  appear  where  the  appliances  for 
instruction  in  them  exist.  An  artistic  atmosphere 
does  not  create  artists  a  literary  atmosphere  does  not 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

create  literators;  poets  and  painters  spring  up  where 
there  was  never  a  verse  made  or  a  picture  seen. 

This  suggests  that  God  is  no  more  idle  now  than  He 
was  at  the  beginning,  but  that  He  is  still  and  forever 
shaping  the  human  chaos  into  the  instruments  and 
means  of  beauty.  It  may  also  suggest  to  that  scholar- 
pride,  that  vanity  of  technique,  which  is  so  apt  to  vaunt 
itself  in  the  teacher,  that  the  best  he  can  do,  after  all, 
is  to  let  the  pupil  teach  himself.  If  he  comes  with 
divine  authority  to  the  thing  he  attempts,  he  will  know 
how  to  use  the  appliances,  of  which  the  teacher  is  only 
the  first. 

The  editor,  if  he  does  not  consciously  perceive  the 
truth,  will  instinctively  feel  it,  and  will  expect  the  ac 
ceptable  young  contributor  from  the  country,  the  vil 
lage,  the  small  town,  and  he  will  look  eagerly  at  any 
thing  that  promises  literature  from  Montana  or  Texas, 
for  he  will  know  that  it  also  promises  novelty. 

If  he  is  a  wise  editor,  he  will  wish  to  hold  his  hand 
as  much  as  possible ;  he  will  think  twice  before  he  asks 
the  contributor  to  change  this  or  correct  that;  he  will 
leave  him  as  much  to  himself  as  he  can.  The  young 
contributor,  on  his  part,  will  do  well  to  realize  this, 
and  to  receive  all  the  editorial  suggestions,  which  are 
veiled  commands  in  most  cases,  as  meekly  and  as 
imaginatively  as  possible. 

The  editor  cannot  always  give  his  reasons,  how 
ever  strongly  he  may  feel  them,  but  the  contributor, 
if  sufficiently  docile,  can  always  divine  them.  It  be 
hooves  him  to  be  docile  at  all  times,  for  this  is  merely 
the  willingness  to  learn;  and  whether  he  learns  that 
he  is  wrong,  or  that  the  editor  is  wrong,  still  he  gains 
knowledge. 

A  great  deal  of  knowledge  comes  simply  from  do 
ing,  and  a  great  deal  more  from  doing  over,  and  this 
is  what  the  editor  generally  means. 

70 


THE   EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

I  think  that  every  author  who  is  honest  with  him 
self  must  own  that  his  work  would  be  twice  as  good 
if  it  were  done  twice.  I  was  once  so  fortunately  cir 
cumstanced  that  I  was  able  entirely  to  rewrite  one  of 
my  novels,  and  I  have  always  thought  it  the  best  writ 
ten,  or  at  least  indefinitely  better  than  it  would  have 
been  with  a  single  writing.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  near 
ly  all  of  them  have  been  rewritten  in  a  certain  way. 
They  have  not  actually  been  rewritten  throughout, 
as  in  the  case  I  speak  of,  but  they  have  been  gone  over 
so  often  in  manuscript  and  in  proof  that  the  effect  has 
been  much  the  same. 

Unless  you  are  sensible  of  some  strong  frame  with 
in  your  work,  something  vertebral,  it  is  best  to  re 
nounce  it,  and  attempt  something  else  in  which  you 
can  feel  it.  If  you  are  secure  of  the  frame  you  must 
observe  the  quality  and  character  of  everything  you 
build  about  it ;  you  must  touch,  you  must  almost  taste, 
you  must  certainly  test,  every  material  you  employ; 
every  bit  of  decoration  must  undergo  the  same  scru 
tiny  as  the  structure. 

It  will  be  some  vague  perception  of  the  want  of  this 
vigilance  in  the  young  contributor's  work  which  causes 
the  editor  to  return  it  to  him  for  revision,  with  those 
suggestions  which  he  will  do  well  to  make  the  most 
of ;  for  when  the  editor  once  finds  a  contributor  he  can 
trust,  he  rejoices  in  him  with  a  fondness  which  the 
contributor  will  never  perhaps  understand. 

It  will  not  do  to  write  for  the  editor  alone;  the  wise 
editor  understands  this,  and  averts  his  countenance 
from  the  contributor  who  writes  at  him ;  but  if  he  feels 
that  the  contributor  conceives  the  situation,  and  will 
conform  to  the  conditions  which  his  periodical  has 
invented  for  itself,  and  will  transgress  none  of  its  un 
written  laws;  if  he  perceives  that  he  has  put  artistic 
conscience  in  every  general  and  detail,  and  though 

71 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

he  has  not  done  the  best,  has  done  the  best  that  he 
can  do,  he  will  begin  to  liberate  him  from  every  tram 
mel  except  those  he  must  wear  himself,  and  will  be 
only  too  glad  to  leave  him  free.  He  understands,  if 
he  is  at  all  fit  for  his  place,  that  a  writer  can  do  well 
only  what  he  likes  to  do,  and  his  wish  is  to  leave  him 
to  himself  as  soon  as  possible. 


In  my  own  case,  I  noticed  that  the  contributors  who 
could  be  best  left  to  themselves  were  those  who  were 
most  amenable  to  suggestion  and  even  correction,  who 
took  the  blue  pencil  with  a  smile,  and  bowed  gladly 
to  the  rod  of  the  proof-reader.  Those  who  were  on 
the  alert  for  offence,  who  resented  a  marginal  note  as 
a  slight,  and  bumptiously  demanded  that  their  work 
should  be  printed  just  as  they  had  written  it,  were 
commonly  not  much  more  desired  by  the  reader  than 
by  the  editor. 

Of  course  the  contributor  naturally  feels  that  the 
public  is  the  test  of  his  excellence,  but  he  must  not 
forget  that  the  editor  is  the  beginning  of  the  public; 
and  I  believe  he  is  a  faithfuller  and  kinder  critic  than 
the  writer  will  ever  find  again. 

Since  my  time  there  is  a  new  tradition  of  editing, 
which  I  do  not  think  so  favorable  to  the  young  con 
tributor  as  the  old.  Formerly  the  magazines  were 
made  up  of  volunteer  contributions  in  much  greater 
measure  than  they  are  now.  At  present  most  of  the 
material  is  invited  and  even  engaged;  it  is  arranged 
for  a  long  while  beforehand,  and  the  space  that  can 
be  given  to  the  aspirant,  the  unknown  good,  the  po 
tential  excellence,  grows  constantly  less  and  less. 

A  great  deal  can  be  said  for  either  tradition;  per- 

72 


THE  EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

haps  some  editor  will  yet  imagine  a  return  to  the  ear 
lier  method.  In  the  mean  time  we  must  deal  with  the 
thing  that  is,  and  submit  to  it  until  it  is  changed.  The 
moral  to  the  young  contributor  is  to  be  better  than  ever, 
to  leave  nothing  undone  that  shall  enhance  his  small 
chances  of  acceptance. 

If  he  takes  care  to  be  so  good  that  the  editor  must  ac 
cept  him  in  spite  of  all  the  pressure  upon  his  pages,  he 
will  not  only  be  serving  himself  best,  but  may  be  help 
ing  the  editor  to  a  conception  of  his  duty  that  shall  be 
more  hospitable  to  all  other  young  contributors.  As 
it  is,  however,  it  must  be  owned  that  their  hope  of  ac 
ceptance  is  very,  very  small,  and  they  will  do  well  -to 
make  sure  that  they  love  literature  so  much  that  they 
can  suffer  long  and  often  repeated  disappointment  in 
its  cause. 

The  love  of  it  is  the  great  and  only  test  of  fitness 
for  it.  It  is  really  inconceivable  how  any  one  should 
attempt  it  without  this,  but  apparently  a  great  many 
do.  It  is  evident  to  every  editor  that  a  vast  number 
of  those  who  write  the  things  he  looks  at  so  faithful 
ly,  and  reads  more  or  less,  have  no  artistic  motive. 

People  write  because  they  wish  to  be  known,  or  be 
cause  they  have  heard  that  money  is  easily  made  in 
that  way,  or  because  they  think  they  will  chance  that 
among  a  number  of  other  things.  The  ignorance  of 
technique  which  they  often  show  is  not  nearly  so  dis 
heartening  as  the  palpable  factitiousness  of  their  prod 
uct.  It  is  something  that  they  have  made;  it  is  not 
anything  that  has  grown  out  of  their  lives. 

I  should  think  it  would  profit  the  young  contribu 
tor,  before  he  puts  pen  to  paper,  to  ask  himself  why  he 
does  so,  and,  if  he  finds  that  he  has  no  motive  in  the 
love  of  the  thing,  to  forbear. 

Am  I  interested  in  what  I  am  going  to  write  about? 
Do  I  feel  it  strongly?  Do  I  know  it  thoroughly?  Do 

73 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

I  imagine  it  clearly?  The  young  contributor  had  bet 
ter  ask  himself  all  these  questions,  and  as  many  more 
like  them  as  he  can  think  of.  Perhaps  he  will  end 
by  not  being  a  young  contributor. 

But  if  he  is  able  to  answer  them  satisfactorily  to 
his  own  conscience,  by  all  means  let  him  begin.  He 
may  at  once  put  aside  all  anxiety  about  style;  that 
is  a  thing  that  will  take  care  of  itself ;  it  will  be  added 
unto  him  if  he  really  has  something  to  say;  for  style 
is  only  a  man's  way  of  saying  a  thing. 

If  he  has  not  much  to  say,  or  if  he  has  nothing  to 
say,  perhaps  he  will  try  to  say  it  in  some  other  man's 
way,  or  to  hide  his  own  vacuity  with  rags  of  rhetoric 
and  tags  and  fringes  of  manner,  borrowed  from  this 
author  and  that.  He  will  fancy  that  in  this  disguise 
his  work  will  be  more  literary,  and  that  there  is  some 
how  a  quality,  a  grace,  imparted  to  it  which  will  charm 
in  spite  of  the  inward  hollowness.  His  vain  hope 
would  be  pitiful  if  it  were  not  so  shameful,  but  it  is 
destined  to  suffer  defeat  at  the  first  glance  of  the  edi 
torial  eye. 

If  he  really  has  something  to  say,  however,  about 
something  he  knows  and  loves,  he  is  in  the  best  possi 
ble  case  to  say  it  well.  Still,  from  time  to  time  he  may 
advantageously  call  a  halt,  and  consider  whether  he 
is  saying  the  thing  clearly  and  simply. 

If  he  has  a  good  ear  he  will  say  it  gracefully  and 
musically;  and  I  would  by  no  means  have  him  aim 
to  say  it  barely  or  sparely.  It  is  not  so  that  people 
talk,  who  talk  well,  and  literature  is  only  the  thought 
of  the  writer  flowing  from  the  pen  instead  of  the  tongue. 

To  aim  at  succinctness  and  brevity  merely,  as  some 
teach,  is  to  practice  a  kind  of  quackery  almost  as  of 
fensive  as  the  charlatanry  of  rhetoric.  In  either  case 
the  life  goes  out  of  the  subject. 

To  please  one's  self,  honestly  and  thoroughly,  is 

74 


THE   EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

the  only  way  to  please  others  in  matters  of  art.  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  if  you  please  yourself  you  will 
always  please  others,  but  that  unless  you  please  your 
self  you  will  please  no  one  else.  It  is  the  sweet  and 
sacred  privilege  of  work  done  artistically  to  delight 
the  doer.  Art  is  the  highest  joy,  but  any  work  done 
in  the  love  of  it  is  art,  in  a  kind,  and  it  strikes  the  note 
of  happiness  as  nothing  else  can. 

We  hear  much  of  drudgery,  but  any  sort  of  work 
that  is  slighted  becomes  drudgery;  poetry,  fiction, 
painting,  sculpture,  acting,  architecture,  if  you  do 
not  do  your  best  by  them,  turn  to  drudgery  sore  as 
digging  ditches,  hewing  wood,  or  drawing  water;  and 
these,  by  the  same  blessings  of  God,  become  arts  if 
they  are  done  with  conscience  and  the  sense  of  beauty. 

The  young  contributor  may  test  his  work  before 
the  editor  assays  it,  if  he  will,  and  he  may  know  by  a 
rule  that  is  pretty  infallible  whether  it  is  good  or  not, 
from  his  own  experience  in  doing  it.  Did  it  give  him 
pleasure?  Did  he  love  it  as  it  grew  under  his  hand? 
Was  he  glad  and  willing  with  it?  Or  did  he  force 
himself  to  it,  and  did  it  han.g  heavy  upon  him? 

There  is  nothing  mystical  in  all  this;  it  is  a  mat 
ter  of  plain,  every-day  experience,  and  I  think  nearly 
every  artist  will  say  the  same  thing  about  it,  if  he  ex 
amines  himself  faithfully. 

If  the  young  contributor  finds  that  he  has  no  de 
light  in  the  thing  he  has  attempted,  he  may  very  well 
give  it  up,  for  no  one  else  will  delight  in  it.  But  he 
need  not  give  it  up  at  once ;  perhaps  his  mood  is  bad ;  let 
him  wait  for  a  better,  and  try  it  again.  He  may  not 
have  learned  how  to  do  it  well,  and  therefore  he  can 
not  love  it,  but  perhaps  he  can  learn  to  do  it  well. 

The  wonder  and  glory  of  art  is  that  it  is  without 
formulas.  Or,  rather,  each  new  piece  of  work  re 
quires  the  invention  of  new  formulas,  which  will  not 

75 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

serve  again  for  another.  You  must  apprentice  your 
self  afresh  at  every  fresh  undertaking,  and  your  mas 
tery  is  always  a  victory  over  certain  unexpected  difficul 
ties,  and  not  a  dominion  of  difficulties  overcome  before. 
I  believe,  in  other  words,  that  mastery  is  merely 
the  strength  that  comes  of  overcoming,  and  is  never 
a  sovereign  power  that  smooths  the  path  of  all  obsta 
cles.  The  combinations  in  art  are  infinite,  and  almost 
never  the  same ;  you  must  make  your  key  and  fit  it  to 
each,  and  the  key  that  unlocks  one  combination  will 
not  unlock  another. 

VI 

There  is  no  royal  road  to  excellence  in  literature, 
but  the  young  contributor  need  not  be  dismayed  at 
that.  Royal  roads  are  the  ways  that  kings  travel, 
and  kings  are  mostly  dull  fellows,  and  rarely  have  a 
good  time.  They  do  not  go  along  singing ;  the  spring 
that  trickles  into  the  mossy  log  is  not  for  them,  nor 

"The  wildwood  flower  that  simply  blows." 

But  the  traveller  on  the  country  road  may  stop  for 
each  of  these ;  and  it  is  not  a  bad  condition  of  his  prog 
ress  that  he  must  move  so  slowly  that  he  can  learn 
every  detail  of  the  landscape,  both  earth  and  sky,  by 
heart. 

The  trouble  with  success  is  that  it  is  apt  to  leave 
life  behind,  or  apart.  The  successful  writer  especial 
ly  is  in  danger  of  becoming  isolated  from  the  reali 
ties  that  nurtured  in  him  the  strength  to  win  success. 
When  he  becomes  famous,  he  becomes  precious  to 
criticism,  to  society,  to  all  the  things  that  do  not  exist 
from  themselves,  or  have  not  the  root  of  the  matter  in 
them. 


THE  EDITOR   AND   YOUNG   CONTRIBUTOR 

Therefore,  I  think  that  a  young  writer's  upward 
course  should  be  slow  and  beset  with  many  obstacles, 
even  hardships.  Not  that  I  believe  in  hardships  as 
having  inherent  virtues;  I  think  it  is  stupid  to  regard 
them  in  that  way ;  but  they  of tener  bring  out  the  virt 
ues  inherent  in  the  sufferer  from  them  than  what  I 
may  call  the  softships  ;  and  at  least  they  stop  him,  and 
give  him  time  to  think. 

This  is  the  great  matter,  for  if  we  prosper  forward 
rapidly,  we  have  no  time  for  anything  but  prospering 
forward  rapidly.  We  have  no  time  for  art,  even  the 
art  by  which  we  prosper. 

I  would  have  the  young  contributor  above  all  things 
realize  that  success  is  not  his  concern.  Good  work, 
true  work,  beautiful  work  is  his  affair,  and  nothing 
else.  If  he  does  this,  success  will  take  care  of  itself. 

He  has  no  business  to  think  of  the  thing  that  will 
take.  It  is  the  editor's  business  to  think  of  that,  and 
it  is  the  contributor's  business  to  think  of  the  thing 
that  he  can  do  with  pleasure,  the  high  pleasure  that 
comes  from  the  sense  of  worth  in  the  thing  done.  Let 
him  do  the  best  he  can,  and  trust  the  editor  to  decide 
whether  it  will  take. 

It  will  take  far  oftener  than  anything  he  attempts 
perfunctorily;  and  even  if  the  editor  thinks  it  will  not 
take,  and  feels  obliged  to  return  it  for  that  reason,  he 
will  return  it  with  a  real  regret,  with  the  honor  and 
affection  which  we  cannot  help  feeling  for  any  one 
who  has  done  a  piece  of  good  work,  and  with  the  will 
and  the  hope  to  get  something  from  him  that  will  take 
the  next  time,  or  the  next,  or  the  next. 


SUMMER  ISLES  OF  EDEN 

IT  may  be  all  an  illusion  of  the  map,  where  the  Sum 
mer  Islands  glimmer  a  small  and  solitary  little 
group  of  dots  and  wrinkles,  remote  from  continental 
shores,  with  a  straight  line  descending  southeast- 
wardly  upon  them,  to  show  how  sharp  and  swift  the 
ship's  course  is,  but  they  seem  so  far  and  alien  from 
my  wonted  place  that  it  is  as  if  I  had  slid  down  a 
steepy  slant  from  the  home-planet  to  a  group  of  as 
teroids  nebulous  somewhere  in  middle  space,  and 
were  resting  there,  still  vibrant  from  the  rush  of  the 
meteoric  fall.  There  were,  of  course,  facts  and  inci 
dents  contrary  to  such  a  theory:  a  steamer  starting 
from  New  York  in  the  raw  March  morning,  and 
lurching  and  twisting  through  two  days  of  diagonal 
seas,  with  people  aboard  dining  and  undining,  and 
talking  and  smoking  and  cocktailing  and  hot-scotch 
ing  and  beef-teaing;  but  when  the  ship  came  in 
sight  of  the  islands,  and  they  began  to  lift  their 
cedared  slopes  from  the  turquoise  waters,  and  to 
explain  their  drifted  snows  as  the  white  walls  and 
white  roofs  of  houses,  then  the  waking  sense  became 
the  dreaming  sense,  and  the  sweet  impossibility  of 
that  drop  through  air  became  the  sole  reality. 


Everything    here,   indeed,   is  so  strange  that  you 
placidly  accept  whatever  offers  itself  as  the  simplest 

78 


SUMMER   ISLES   OF   EDEN 

and  naturalest  fact.  Those  low  hills,  that  climb, 
with  their  tough,  dark  cedars,  from  the  summer  sea 
to  the  summer  sky,  might  have  drifted  down  across 
the  Gulf  Stream  from  the  coast  of  Maine;  but  when, 
upon  closer  inspection,  you  find  them  skirted  with 
palms  and  bananas,  and  hedged  with  oleanders,  you 
merely  wonder  that  you  had  never  noticed  these 
growths  in  Maine  before,  where  you  were  so  familiar 
with  the  cedars.  The  hotel  itself,  which  has  brought 
the  Green  Mountains  with  it,  in  every  detail,  from  the 
dormer-windowed  mansard-roof,  and  the  white-painted, 
green-shuttered  wralls,  to  the  neat,  school-mistressly 
waitresses  in  the  dining-room,  has  a  clump  of  pal 
mettos  beside  it,  swaying  and  sighing  in  the  tropic 
breeze,  and  you  know  that  when  it  migrates  back  to 
the  New  England  hill-country,  at  the  end  of  the  sea 
son,  you  shall  find  it  with  the  palmettos  still  before 
its  veranda,  and  equally  at  home,  somewhere  in  the 
Vermont  or  New  Hampshire  July.  There  will  be  the 
same  American  groups  looking  out  over  them,  and 
rocking  and  smoking,  though,  alas!  not  so  many 
smoking  as  rocking. 

But  where,  in  that  translation,  would  be  the  gold- 
braided  red  or  blue  jackets  of  the  British  army  and 
navy  which  lend  their  lustre  and  color  here  to  the  ve 
randa  groups?  Where  should  one  get  the  house  walls 
of  whitewashed  stone  and  the  garden  walls  which 
everywhere  glow  in  the  sun,  and  belt  in  little  spaces 
full  of  roses  and  lilies?  These  things  must  come 
from  some  other  association,  and  in  the  case  of  him 
who  here  confesses,  the  lustrous  uniforms  and  the 
glowing  walls  rise  from  waters  as  far  away  in  time 
as  in  space,  and  a  long-ago  apparition  of  Venetian 
Junes  haunts  the  coral  shore.  (They  are  beginning 
to  say  the  shore  is  not  coral ;  but  no  matter. )  To  be 
sure,  the  white  roofs  are  not  accounted  for  in  this 

79 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

visionary  presence;  and  if  one  may  not  relate  them  to 
the  snowfalls  of  home  winters,  then  one  must  frankly 
own  them  absolutely  tropical,  together  with  the  green- 
pillared  and  green-latticed  galleries.  They  at  least 
suggest  the  tropical  scenery  of  Prue  and  I  as  one  re 
members  seeing  it  through  Titbottom's  spectacles; 
and  yet,  if  one  supplies  roofs  of  brown-red  tiles,  it  is 
all  Venetian  enough,  with  the  lagoon -like  expanses 
that  lend  themselves  to  the  fond  effect.  It  is  so  Vene 
tian,  indeed,  that  it  wants  but  a  few  silent  gondolas 
and  noisy  gondoliers,  in  place  of  the  dark,  taciturn 
oarsmen  of  the  clumsy  native  boats,  to  complete  the 
coming  and  going  illusion;  and  there  is  no  good  rea 
son  why  the  rough  little  isles  that  fill  the  bay  should 
not  call  themselves  respectively  San  Giorgio  and  San 
Clemente,  and  Sant'  Elena  and  San  Lazzaro:  they 
probably  have  no  other  names  1 


These  summer  isles  of  Eden  have  this  advantage 
over  the  scriptural  Eden,  that  apparently  it  was  not 
woman  and  her  seed  who  were  expelled,  when  once  she 
set  foot  here,  but  the  serpent  and  his  seed :  women  now 
abound  in  the  Summer  Islands,  and  there  is  not  a 
snake  anywhere  to  be  found.  There  are  some  tor 
toises  and  a  great  many  frogs  in  their  season,  but  no 
other  reptiles.  The  frogs  are  fabled  of  a  note  so  deep 
and  hoarse  that  its  vibration  almost  springs  the  en 
vironing  mines  of  dynamite,  though  it  has  never  yet 
done  so ;  the  tortoises  grow  to  a  great  size  and  a  patri 
archal  age,  and  are  fond  of  Boston  brown  bread  and 
baked  beans,  if  their  preferences  may  be  judged  from 
those  of  a  colossal  specimen  in  the  care  of  an  Amer 
ican  family  living  on  the  islands.  The  observer  who 

80 


SUMMER   ISLES   OF   EDEN 

contributes  this  fact  to  science  is  able  to  report  the 
case  of  a  parrot-fish,  on  the  same  premises,  so  exactly 
like  a  large  brown  and  purple  cockatoo  that,  seeing 
such  a  cockatoo  later  on  dry  land,  it  was  with  a  sense 
of  something  like  cruelty  in  its  exile  from  its  native 
waters.  The  angel-fish  he  thinks  not  so  much  like 
angels;  they  are  of  a  transparent  purity  of  substance, 
and  a  cherubic  innocence  of  expression,  but  they  ter 
minate  in  two  tails,  which  somehow  will  not  lend  them 
selves  to  the  resemblance. 

Certainly  the  angel-fish  is  not  so  well  named  as 
the  parrot-fish;  it  might  better  be  called  the  ghost- 
fish,  it  is  so  like  a  moonbeam  in  the  pools  it  haunts, 
and  of  such  a  convertible  quality  with  the  iridescent 
vegetable  growths  about  it.  All  things  here  are  of  a 
weird  convertibility  to  the  alien  perception,  and  the 
richest  and  rarest  facts  of  nature  lavish  themselves 
in  humble  association  with  the  commonest  and  most 
familiar.  You  drive  through  long  stretches  of  way 
side  willows,  and  realize  only  now  and  then  that  these 
willows  are  thick  clumps  of  oleanders;  and  through 
them  you  can  catch  glimpses  of  banana-orchards, 
which  look  like  dishevelled  patches  of  gigantic  corn 
stalks.  The  fields  of  Easter  lilies  do  not  quite  live 
up  to  their  photographs;  they  are  presently  suffering 
from  a  mysterious  blight,  and  their  flowers  are  not 
frequent  enough  to  lend  them  that  sculpturesque  ef 
fect  near  to,  which  they  wear  as  far  off  as  New  York. 
The  potato-fields,  on  the  other  hand,  are  of  a  tender 
delicacy  of  coloring  which  compensates  for  the  lilies' 
lack,  and  the  palms  give  no  just  cause  for  complaint, 
unless  because  they  are  not  nearly  enough  to  char 
acterize  the  landscape,  which  in  spite  of  their  pres 
ence  remains  so  northern  in  aspect.  They  were  much 
whipped  arid  torn  by  a  late  hurricane,  which  afflicted 
all  the  vegetation  of  the  islands,  and  some  of  the  royal 
«  81 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

palms  were  blown  down.  Where  these  are  yet  stand 
ing,  as  four  or  five  of  them  are  in  a  famous  avenue  now 
quite  one-sided,  they  are  of  a  majesty  befitting  that 
of  any  king  who  could  pass  by  them:  no  sovereign 
except  Philip  of  Macedon  in  his  least  judicial  moments 
"could  pass  between  them. 

The  century-plant,  which  here  does  not  require  pam 
pering  under  glass,  but  boldly  takes  its  place  out 
doors  with  the  other  trees  of  the  garden,  employs  much 
less  than  a  hundred  years  to  bring  itself  to  bloom.  It 
often  flowers  twice  or  thrice  in  that  space  of  time,  and 
ought  to  take  away  the  reproach  of  the  inhabitants  for 
a  want  of  industry  and  enterprise :  a  century-plant  at 
least  could  do  no  more  in  any  air,  and  it  merits  praise 
for  its  activity  in  the  breath  of  these  languorous  seas. 
One  such  must  be  in  bloom  at  this  very  writing,  in  the 
garden  of  a  house  which  this  very  writer  marked  for 
his  own  on  his  first  drive  ashore  from  the  steamer  to  the 
hotel,  when  he  bestowed  in  its  dim,  unknown  interior 
one  of  the  many  multiples  of  himself  which  are  now 
pretty  well  dispersed  among  the  pleasant  places  of  the 
earth.  It  fills  the  night  with  a  heavy  heliotropean 
sweetness,  and  on  the  herb  beneath,  in  the  effulgence 
of  the  waxing  moon,  the  multiple  which  has  spirit 
ually  expropriated  the  legal  owners  stretches  itself  in 
an  interminable  reverie,  and  hears  Youth  come  laugh 
ing  back  to  it  on  the  waters  kissing  the  adjacent  shore, 
where  other  white  houses  (which  also  it  inhabits) 
bathe  their  snowy  underpinning.  In  this  dream  the 
multiple  drives  home  from  the  balls  of  either  hotel 
with  the  young  girls  in  the  little  victorias  which  must 
pass  its  sojourn;  and,  being  but  a  vision  itself,  fore 
casts  the  shapes  of  flirtation  which  shall  night  -  long 
gild  the  visions  of  their  sleep  with  the  flash  of  mil 
itary  and  naval  uniforms.  Of  course  the  multiple 
has  been  at  the  dance  too  (with  a  shadowy  heart- 

82 


SUMMER    ISLES   OF   EDEN 

ache  for  the  dances  of  forty  years  ago),  and  knows 
enough  not  to  confuse  the  uniforms. 


nr 

In  whatever  way  you  walk,  at  whatever  hour,  the 
birds  are  sweetly  calling  in  the  way-side  oleanders 
and  the  wild  sage-bushes  and  the  cedar-tops.  They 
are  mostly  cat-birds,  quite  like  our  own ;  and  bluebirds, 
but  of  a  deeper  blue  than  ours,  and  redbirds  of  as  liquid 
a  note,  but  not  so  varied,  as  that  of  the  redbirds  of  our 
woods.  How  came  they  all  here,  seven  hundred  miles 
from  any  larger  land?  Some  think,  on  the  stronger 
wings  of  tempests,  for  it  is  not  within  the  knowledge 
of  men  that  men  brought  them.  Men  did,  indeed,  bring 
the  pestilent  sparrows  which  swarm  about  their  hab 
itations  here,  and  beat  away  the  gentler  and  lovelier 
birds  with  a  ferocity  unknown  in  the  human  occupa 
tion  of  the  islands.  Still,  the  sparrows  have  by  no 
means  conquered,  and  in  the  wilder  places  the  cat 
bird  makes  common  cause  with  the  bluebird  and  the 
redbird,  and  holds  its  own  against  them.  The  little 
ground-doves  mimic  in  miniature  the  form  and  mark 
ings  and  the  gait  and  mild  behavior  of  our  turtle-doves, 
but  perhaps  not  their  melancholy  cooing.  Nature 
has  nowhere  anything  prettier  than  these  exquisite 
creatures,  unless  it  be  the  long-tailed  white  gulls  which 
sail  over  the  emerald  shallows  of  the  land-locked  seas, 
and  take  the  green  upon  their  translucent  bodies  as 
they  trail  their  meteoric  splendor  against  the  mid-day 
sky.  Full  twenty-four  inches  they  measure  from  the  beak 
to  the  tip  of  the  single  pen  that  protracts  them  a  foot  be 
yond  their  real  bulk;  but  it  is  said  their  tempers  are 
shorter  than  they,  and  they  attack  fiercely  anything  they 
suspect  of  too  intimate  a  curiosity  concerning  their  nests. 

83 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

They  are  probably  the  only  short-tempered  things 
in  the  Summer  Islands,  where  time  is  so  long  that  if 
you  lose  your  patience  you  easily  find  it  again.  Sweet 
ness,  if  not  light,  seems  to  be  the  prevailing  human 
quality,  and  a  good  share  of  it  belongs  to  such  of  the 
natives  as  are  in  no  wise  light.  Our  poor  brethren 
of  a  different  pigment  are  in  the  large  majority,  and 
they  have  been  seventy  years  out  of  slavery,  with  the 
full  enjoyment  of  all  their  civil  rights,  without  lifting 
themselves  from  their  old  inferiority.  They  do  the 
hard  work,  in  their  own  easy  way,  and  possibly  do  not 
find  life  the  burden  they  make  it  for  the  white  man, 
whom  here,  as  in  our  own  country,  they  load  up  with 
the  conundrum  which  their  existence  involves  for 
him.  They  are  not  very  gay,  and  do  not  rise  to  a  joke 
with  that  flashing  eagerness  which  they  show  for  it 
at  home.  If  you  have  them  against  a  background 
of  banana-stems,  or  low  palms,  or  feathery  canes, 
nothing  could  be  more  acceptably  characteristic  of 
the  air  and  sky;  nor  are  they  out  of  place  on  the  box 
of  the  little  victorias,  where  visitors  of  the  more  in 
quisitive  sex  put  them  to  constant  question.  Such 
visitors  spare  no  islander  of  any  color.  Once,  in  the 
pretty  Public  Garden  which  the  multiple  had  claimed 
for  its  private  property,  three  unmerciful  American 
women  suddenly  descended  from  the  heavens  and  be 
gan  to  question  the  multiple's  gardener,  who  was 
peacefully  digging  at  the  rate  of  a  spadeful  every  five 
minutes.  Presently  he  sat  down  on  his  wheelbarrow, 
and  then  shifted,  without  relief,  from  one  handle  of  it  to 
the  other.  Then  he  rose  and  braced  himself  desperately 
against  the  tool-house,  where,  when  his  tormentors  drift 
ed  away,  he  seemed  to  the  soft  eye  of  pity  pinned  to  the 
wall  by  their  cruel  interrogations,  whose  barbed  points 
were  buried  in  the  stucco  behind  him,  and  whose  feath 
ered  shafts  stuck  out  half  a  yard  before  his  breast. 


PADRE   GIACOMO   ISSAVERDENS 


SUMMER   ISLES   OF   EDEN 

Whether  he  was  black  or  not,  pity  could  not  see, 
but  probably  he  was.  At  least  the  garrison  of  the 
islands  is  all  black,  being  a  Jamaican  regiment  of 
that  color;  and  when  one  of  the  warriors  comes  down 
the  white  street,  with  his  swagger-stick  in  his  hand, 
and  flaming  in  scarlet  and  gold  upon  the  ground  of 
his  own  blackness,  it  is  as  if  a  gigantic  oriole  were 
coming  towards  you,  or  a  mighty  tulip.  These  gor 
geous  creatures  seem  so  much  readier  than  the  natives 
to  laugh,  that  you  wish  to  test  them  with  a  joke. 
But  it  might  fail.  The  Summer  Islands  are  a  British 
colony,  and  the  joke  does  not  flourish  so  luxuriantly 
here  as  some  other  things. 

To  be  sure,  one  of  the  native  fruits  seems  a  sort  of 
joke  when  you  hear  it  first  named,  and  when  you  are 
offered  a  loquat,  if  you  are  of  a  frivolous  mind  you 
search  your  mind  for  the  connection  with  loquor  which 
it  seems  to  intimate.  Failing  in  this,  you  taste  the 
fruit,  and  then,  if  it  is  not  perfectly  ripe,  you  are  as 
far  from  loquaciousness  as  if  you  had  bitten  a  green 
persimmon.  But  if  it  is  ripe,  it  is  delicious,  and  may 
be  consumed  indefinitely.  It  is  the  only  native  fruit 
which  one  can  wish  to  eat  at  all,  with  an  unpractised 
palate,  though  it  is  claimed  that  with  experience  a 
relish  may  come  for  the  pawpaws.  These  break  out 
in  clusters  of  the  size  of  oranges  at  the  top  of  a  thick 
pole,  which  may  have  some  leaves  or  may  not,  and 
ripen  as  they  fancy  in  the  indefinite  summer.  They 
are  of  the  color  and  flavor  of  a  very  insipid  little  musk- 
melon  which  has  grown  too  near  a  patch  of  squashes. 

One  may  learn  to  like  this  pawpaw,  yes,  but  one 
must  study  hard.  It  is  best  when  plucked  by  a  young 
islander  of  Italian  blood  whose  father  orders  him  up 
the  bare  pole  in  the  sunny  Sunday  morning  air  to 
oblige  the  signori,  and  then  with  a  pawpaw  in  either 
hand  stands  talking  with  them  about  the  two  bad 

85 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

years  there  have  been  in  Bermuda,  and  the  probabil 
ity  of  his  doing  better  in  Nuova  York.  He  has  not 
imagined  our  winter,  however,  and  he  shrinks  from 
its  boldly  pictured  rigors,  and  lets  the  signpri  go 
with  a  sigh,  and  a  bunch  of  pink  and  crimson  roses. 
The  roses  are  here,  budding  and  blooming  in  the 
quiet  bewilderment  which  attends  the  flowers  and 
plants  from  the  temperate  zone  in  this  latitude,  and 
which  in  the  case  of  the  strawberries  offered  with  cream 
and  cake  at  another  public  garden  expresses  itself  in 
a  confusion  of  red,  ripe  fruit  and  white  blossoms  on 
the  same  stem.  They  are  a  pleasure  to  the  nose  and 
eye  rather  than  the  palate,  as  happens  with  so  many 
growths  of  the  tropics,  if  indeed  the  Summer  Islands 
are  tropical,  which  some  plausibly  deny ;  though  why 
should  not  strawberries,  fresh  picked  from  the  plant 
in  mid-March,  enjoy  the  right  to  be  indifferent  sweet? 


IV 

What  remains?  The  events  of  the  Summer  Isl 
ands  are  few,  and  none  out  of  the  order  of  athletics 
between  teams  of  the  army  and  navy,  and  what  may 
be  called  societetics,  have  happened  in  the  past  en 
chanted  fortnight.  But  far  better  things  than  events 
have  happened:  sunshine  and  rain  of  such  like  qual 
ity  that  one  could  not  grumble  at  either,  and  gales, 
now  from  the  south  and  now  from  the  north,  with  the 
languor  of  the  one  and  the  vigor  of  the  other  in  them. 
There  were  drives  upon  drives  that  were  always  to 
somewhere,  but  would  have  been  delightful  the  same 
if  they  had  been  mere  goings  and  comings,  past  the 
white  houses  overlooking  little  lawns  through  the 
umbrage  of  their  palm-trees.  The  lawns  professed  to 
be  of  grass,  but  were  really  mats  of  close  little  herbs 

86 


GROTESQUE    WITH    WIND-WORN    AND    WAVE-WORN    ROCKS 


A    BERMUDA    HOUSE 


SUMMER   ISLES   OF   EDEN 

which  were  not  grass;  but  which,  where  the  sparse 
cattle  were  grazing  them,  seemed  to  satisfy  their  in- 
exacting  stomachs.  They  are  never  very  green,  and 
in  fact  the  landscape  often  has  an  air  of  exhaustion 
and  pause  which  it  wears  with  us  in  late  August;  and 
why  not,  after  all  its  interminable,  innumerable  sum 
mers?  Everywhere  in  the  gentle  hollows  which  the 
coral  hills  (if  they  are  coral)  sink  into  are  the  patches 
of  potatoes  and  lilies  and  onions  drawing  their  geo 
metrical  lines  across  the  brown  -  red,  weedless  soil  ; 
and  in  very  sheltered  spots  are  banana-orchards  which 
are  never  so  snugly  sheltered  there  but  their  broad 
leaves  are  whipped  to  shreds.  The  white  road  winds 
between  gray  walls  crumbling  in  an  amiable  disin 
tegration,  but  held  together  against  ruin  by  a  net 
work  of  maidenhair  ferns  and  creepers  of  unknown 
name,  and  overhung  by  trees  where  the  cactus  climbs 
and  hangs  in  spiky  links,  or  if  another  sort,  pierces 
them  with  speary  stems  as  tall  and  straight  as  the 
stalks  of  the  neighboring  bamboo.  The  loquat-trees 
cluster  like  quinces  in  the  garden  closes,  and  show 
their  pale  golden,  plum-shaped  fruit. 

For  the  most  part  the  road  runs  by  still  inland  waters, 
but  sometimes  it  climbs  to  the  high  downs  beside  the 
open  sea,  grotesque  with  wind-worn  and  wave-worn 
rocks,  and  beautiful  with  opalescent  beaches,  and  the 
black  legs  of  the  negro  children  paddling  in  the  tints 
of  the  prostrate  rainbow. 

All  this  seems  probable  and  natural  enough  at  the 
writing ;  but  how  will  it  be  when  one  has  turned  one's 
back  upon  it?  Will  it  not  lapse  into  the  gross  fable 
of  travellers,  and  be  as  the  things  which  the  liars  who 
swap  them  cannot  themselves  believe?  What  will 
be  said  to  you  when  you  tell  that  in  the  Summer  Isl 
ands  one  has  but  to  saw  a  hole  in  his  back  yard  and 
take  out  a  house  of  soft,  creamy  sandstone  and  set  it 

87 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

up  and  go  to  living  in  it?  What,  when  you  relate 
that  among  the  northern  and  southern  evergreens 
there  are  deciduous  trees  which,  in  a  clime  where  there 
is  no  fall  or  spring,  simply  drop  their  leaves  when  they 
are  tired  of  keeping  them  on,  and  put  out  others  when 
they  feel  like  it?  What,  when  you  pretend  that  in  the 
absence  of  serpents  there  are  centipedes  a  span  long, 
and  spiders  the  bigness  of  bats,  and  mosquitoes  that 
sweetly  sing  in  the  drowsing  ear,  but  bite  not;  or  that 
there  are  swamps  but  no  streams,  and  in  the  marshes 
stand  mangrove  -  trees  whose  branches  grow  down 
ward  into  the  ooze,  as  if  they  wished  to  get  back  into 
the  earth  and  pull  in  after  them  the  holes  they  emerged 
from? 

These  every-day  facts  seem  not  only  incredible  to 
the  liar  himself,  even  in  their  presence,  but  when  you 
begin  the  ascent  of  that  steep  slant  back  to  New  York 
you  foresee  that  they  will  become  impossible.  As 
impossible  as  the  summit  of  the  slant  now  appears  to 
the  sense  which  shudderingly  figures  it  a  Bermuda 
pawpaw-tree  seven  hundred  miles  high,  and  fruiting 
icicles  and  snowballs  in  the  March  air! 


WILD  FLOWERS  OF  THE  ASPHALT 

OOKING  through  Mrs.  Caroline  A.  Creevey's  charm- 
ing  book  on  the  Flowers  of  Field,  Hill,  and 
Swamp,  the  other  day,  I  was  very  forcibly  reminded 
of  the  number  of  these  pretty,  wilding  growths  which 
I  had  been  finding  all  the  season  long  among  the 
streets  of  asphalt  and  the  sidewalks  of  artificial  stone 
in  this  city;  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  any  one  who 
has  been  kept  in  New  York,  as  I  have  been  this  year, 
beyond  the  natural  time  of  going  into  the  country, 
can  have  as  real  a  pleasure  in  this  sylvan  invasion 
as  mine,  if  he  will  but  give  himself  up  to  a  sense  of  it. 


Of  course  it  is  altogether  too  late,  now,  to  look  for 
any  of  the  early  spring  flowers,  but  I  can  recall  the 
exquisite  effect  of  the  tender  blue  hepatica  fringing 
the  centre  rail  of  the  grip-cars,  all  up  and  down  Broad 
way,  and  apparently  springing  from  the  hollow  be 
neath,  where  the  cable  ran  with  such  a  brooklike 
gurgle  that  any  damp-living  plant  must  find  itself  at 
home  there.  The  water-pimpernel  may  now  be  seen, 
by  any  sympathetic  eye,  blowing  delicately  along  the 
track,  in  the  breeze  of  the  passing  cabs,  and  elas- 
tically  lifting  itself  from  the  rush  of  the  cars.  The 
reader  can  easily  verify  it  by  the  picture  in  Mrs.  Cree- 

89 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

vey's  book.  He  knows  it  by  its  other  name  of  brook- 
weed;  and  he  will  have  my  delight,  I  am  sure,  in  the 
cardinal-flower  which  will  be  with  us  in  August.  It 
is  a  shy  flower,  loving  the  more  sequestered  nooks, 
and  may  be  sought  along  the  shady  stretches  of  Third 
Avenue,  where  the  Elevated  Road  overhead  forms  a 
shelter  as  of  interlacing  boughs.  The  arrow-head  likes 
such  swampy  expanses  as  the  converging  surface  roads 
form  at  Dead  Man's  Curve  and  the  corners  of  Twenty- 
third  Street.  This  is  in  flower  now,  and  will  be  till 
September;  and  St. -John's- wort,  which  some  call  the 
false  golden-rod,  is  already  here.  You  may  find  it  in 
any  moist,  low  ground,  but  the  gutters  of  Wall  Street, 
or  even  the  banks  of  the  Stock  Exchange,  are  not  too 
dry  for  it.  The  real  golden-rod  is  not  much  in  evidence 
with  us,  for  it  comes  only  when  summer  is  on  the  wane. 
The  other  night,  however,  on  the  promenade  of  the 
Madison  Square  Roof  Garden,  I  was  delighted  to  see 
it  growing  all  over  the  oblong  dome  of  the  auditorium, 
in  response  to  the  cry  of  a  homesick  cricket  which 
found  itself  in  exile  there  at  the  base  of  a  potted  ever 
green.  This  lonely  insect  had  no  sooner  sounded  its 
winter-boding  note  than  the  fond  flower  began  sym 
pathetically  to  wave  and  droop  along  those  tarry 
slopes,  as  I  have  seen  it  on  how  many  hill-side  past 
ures  1  But  this  may  have  been  only  a  transitory  re 
sponse  to  the  cricket,  and  I  cannot  promise  the  visitor 
to  the  Roof  Garden  that  he  will  find  golden-rod  there 
every  night.  I  believe  there  is  always  Golden  Seal, 
but  it  is  the  kind  that  comes  in  bottles,  and  not  in  the 
gloom  of  "deep,  cool,  moist  woods/'  where  Mrs.  Cree- 
vey  describes  it  as  growing,  along  with  other  wildings 
of  such  sweet  names  or  quaint  as  Celandine,  and 
Dwarf  Larkspur,  and  Squirrel-corn,  and  Dutchman's- 
breeches,  and  Pearlwort,  and  Wood-sorrel,  and  Bish 
op's -cap,  and  Winter  green,  and  Indian -pipe,  and 

90 


SUCH    SWAMPY    EXPANSES  AS   THE   CONVERGING    SURFACE   ROADS 
FORM    AT    DEAD    MAN'S   CURVE  " 


WILD   FLOWERS   OF   THE   ASPHALT 

Snowberry,  and  Adder's-tongue,  and  Wakerobin,  and 
Dragon-root,  and  Adam-and-Eve,  and  twenty  more, 
which  must  have  got  their  names  from  some  fairy  of 
genius.  I  should  say  it  was  a  female  fairy  of  genius 
who  called  them  so,  and  that  she  had  her  own  sex 
among  mortals  in  mind  when  she  invented  their 
nomenclature,  and  was  thinking  of  little  girls,  and 
slim,  pretty  maids,  and  happy  young  wives.  The 
author  tells  how  they  all  look,  with  a  fine  sense  of 
their  charm  in  her  words,  but  one  would  know  how 
they  looked  from  their  names ;  and  when  you  call  them 
over  they  at  once  transplant  themselves  to  the  depths 
of  the  dells  between  our  sky-scrapers,  and  find  a 
brief  sojourn  in  the  cavernous  excavations  whence 
other  sky-scrapers  are  to  rise. 


That  night  on  the  Roof  Garden,  when  the  cricket's 
cry  flowered  the  dome  with  golden-rod,  the  tall  stems 
of  rye  growing  among  the  orchestra  sloped  all  one  way 
at  times,  just  like  the  bows  of  violins,  in  the  half-dol 
lar  gale  that  always  blows  over  the  city  at  that  height. 
But  as  one  turns  the  leaves  of  Mrs.  Creevey's  magic 
book — perhaps  one  ought  to  say  turns  its  petals — 
the  forests  and  the  fields  come  and  make  themselves 
at  home  in  the  city  everywhere.  By  virtue  of  it  I  have 
been  more  in  the  country  in  a  half-hour  than  if  I  had 
lived  all  June  there.  When  I  lift  my  eyes  from  its 
pictures  or  its  letter-press  my  vision  prints  the  eidolons 
of  wild  flowers  everywhere,  as  it  prints  the  image  of 
the  sun  against  the  air  after  dwelling  on  his  bright 
ness.  The  rose-mallow  flaunts  along  Fifth  Avenue 
and  the  golden  threads  of  the  dodder  embroider  the 
house  fronts  on  the  principal  cross  streets ;  and  I  might 

91 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

think  at  times  that  it  was  all  mere  fancy,  i  has  so 
much  the  quality  of  a  pleasing  illusion. 

Yet  Mrs.  Creevey's  book  is  not  one  to  lend  itself  to 
such  a  deceit  by  any  of  the  ordinary  arts.  It  is  rather 
matter  of  fact  in  form  and  manner,  and  largely  owes 
what  magic  it  has  to  the  inherent  charm  of  its  sub 
ject.  One  feels  this  in  merely  glancing  at  the  index, 
and  reading  such  titles  of  chapters  as  "  Wet  Meadows 
and  Low  Grounds";  "Dry  Fields — Waste  Places — 
Waysides  " ;  "  Hills  and  Rocky  Woods,  Open  Woods  " ; 
and  "Deep,  Cool,  Moist  Woods";  each  a  poem  in  it 
self,  lyric  or  pastoral,  and  of  a  surpassing  opulence  of 
suggestion.  The  spring  and  summer  months  pass  in 
stately  processional  through  the  book,  each  with  her 
fillet  inscribed  with  the  names  of  her  characteristic 
flowers  or  blossoms,  and  brightened  with  the  blooms 
themselves. 

They  are  plucked  from  where  nature  bade  them 
grow  in  the  wild  places,  or  their  own  wayward  wills 
led  them  astray.  A  singularly  fascinating  chapter 
is  that  called  "Escaped  from  Gardens/'  in  which  some 
of  these  pretty  runagates  are  catalogued.  I  supposed 
in  my  liberal  ignorance  that  the  Bouncing  Bet  was 
the  only  one  of  these,  but  I  have  learned  that  the  Pansy 
and  the  Sweet  Violet  love  to  gad,  and  that  the  Cara 
way,  the  Snapdragon,  the  Prince's  Feather,  the  Sum 
mer  Savory,  the  Star  of  Bethlehem,  the  Day-Lily,  and 
the  Tiger-Lily,  and  even  the  sluggish  Stone  Crop  are 
of  the  vagrant,  fragrant  company.  One  is  not  sur 
prised  to  meet  the  Tiger  -  Lily  in  it ;  that  must  al 
ways  have  had  the  jungle  in  its  heart ;  but  that  the 
Baby's  Breath  should  be  found  wandering  by  the 
road-sides  from  Massachusetts  and  Virginia  to  Ohio, 
gives  one  a  tender  pang  as  for  a  lost  child.  Per 
haps  the  poor  human  tramps,  who  sleep  in  barns  and 
feed  at  back  doors  along  those  dusty  ways,  are  mind- 

92 


WILD   FLOWERS   OF   THE   ASPHALT 

ful  of  the   Baby's   Breath,   and   keep    a   kindly  eye 
out  for  the  little  truant. 


Ill 

As  I  was  writing  those  homely  names  I  felt  again 
how  fit  and  lovely  they  were,  how  much  more  fit  and 
lovely  than  the  scientific  names  of  the  flowers.  Mrs. 
Creevey  will  make  a  botanist  of  you  if  you  will  let  her, 
and  I  fancy  a  very  good  botanist,  though  I  cannot 
speak  from  experience,  but  she  will  make  a  poet  of 
you  in  spite  of  yourself,  as  I  very  well  know ;  and  she 
will  do  this  simply  by  giving  you  first  the  familiar 
name  of  the  flowers  she  loves  to  write  of.  I  am  not  say 
ing  that  the  Day-Lily  would  not  smell  as  sweet  by  her 
title  of  Hemerocallis  Fulva,  or  that  the  homely,  hearty 
Bouncing  Bet  would  not  kiss  as  deliciously  in  her 
scholar's  cap  and  gown  of  Saponaria  Officinalis;  but 
merely  that  their  college  degrees  do  not  lend  them 
selves  so  willingly  to  verse,  or  even  melodious  prose, 
which  is  what  the  poet  is  often  after  nowadays.  So 
I  like  best  to  hail  the  flowers  by  the  names  that  the 
fairies  gave  them,  and  the  children  know  them  by, 
especially  when  my  longing  for  them  makes  them 
grow  here  in  the  city  streets.  I  have  a  fancy  that 
they  would  all  vanish  away  if  I  saluted  them  in  botan 
ical  terms.  As  long  as  I  talk  of  cat-tail  rushes,  the 
homeless  grimalkins  of  the  areas  and  the  back  fences 
help  me  to  a  vision  of  the  swamps  thickly  studded 
with  their  stiff  spears ;  but  if  I  called  them  Typha  Lati- 
folia,  or  even  Typha  An gusti folia,  there  is  not  the 
hardiest  and  fiercest  prowler  of  the  roof  and  the  fire- 
escape  but  would  fly  the  sound  of  my  voice  and  leave 
me  forlorn  amid  the  withered  foliage  of  my  dream. 
The  street  sparrows,  pestiferous  and  persistent  as  they 
are,  would  forsake  my  sylvan  pageant  if  I  spoke  of  the 

93 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

Bird-foot  Violet  as  the  Viola  Pedata ;  and  the  com 
monest  cur  would  run  howling  if  he  heard  the  gentle 
Poison  Dogwood  maligned  as  the  Rhus  Venenata. 
The  very  milk-cans  would  turn  to  their  native  pumps 
in  disgust  from  my  attempt  to  invoke  our  simple  Amer 
ican  Cowslip  as  the  Dodecatheon  Meadia. 


IV 

Yet  I  do  not  deny  that  such  scientific  nomenclature 
has  its  uses;  and  I  should  be  far  from  undervaluing 
this  side  of  Mrs.  Creevey's  book.  In  fact,  I  secretly 
respect  it  the  more  for  its  botanical  lore,  and  if  ever  I 
get  into  the  woods  or  fields  again  I  mean  to  go  up  to 
some  of  the  humblest  flowers,  such  as  I  can  feel  my 
self  on  easy  terms  with,  and  tell  them  what  they  are 
in  Latin.  I  think  it  will  surprise  them,  and  I  dare 
say  they  will  some  of  them  like  it,  and  will  want  their 
initials  inscribed  on  their  leaves,  like  those  signatures 
which  the  medicinal  plants  bear,  or  are  supposed  to 
bear.  But  as  long  as  I  am  engaged  in  their  culture 
amid  this  stone  and  iron  and  asphalt,  I  find  it  best 
to  invite  their  presence  by  their  familiar  names,  and  I 
hope  they  will  not  think  them  too  familiar.  I  should 
like  to  get  them  all  naturalized  here,  so  that  the  thou 
sands  of  poor  city  children,  who  never  saw  them  grow 
ing  in  their  native  places,  might  have  some  notion  of 
how  bountifully  the  world  is  equipped  wTith  beauty, 
and  how  it  is  governed  by  many  laws  which  are  not 
enforced  by  policemen.  I  think  that  would  interest 
them  very  much,  and  I  shall  not  mind  their  plucking 
my  Barmecide  blossoms,  and  carrying  them  home  by 
the  armf  uls.  When  good-will  costs  nothing  we  ought  to 
practise  it  even  with  the  tramps,  and  these  are  very  wel 
come,  in  their  wanderings  over  the  city  pave,  to  rest  their 
weary  limbs  in  any  of  my  pleached  bowers  they  come  to. 

94 


I    CANNOT    PROMISE   THE   VISITOR    TO    THE    ROOF    GARDEN    THAT    HE 
WILL   FIND    GOLDEN-ROD    THERE    EVERY    NIGHT" 


LAST   DAYS   IN   A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

(1897) 

WHEN  we  said  that  we  were  going  to  Schevenin- 
gen,  in  the  middle  of  September,  the  portier  of 
the  hotel  at  The  Hague  was  sure  we  should  be  very 
cold,  perhaps  because  we  had  suffered  so  much  in  his 
house  already;  and  he  was  right,  for  the  wind  blew 
with  a  Dutch  tenacity  of  purpose  for  a  whole  week,  so 
that  the  guests  thinly  peopling  the  vast  hostelry  seemed 
to  rustle  through  its  chilly  halls  and  corridors  like  so 
many  autumn  leaves.  We  were  but  a  poor  hundred 
at  most  where  five  hundred  would  not  have  been  a 
crowd ;  and,  when  we  sat  down  at  the  long  tables  d'h6te 
in  the  great  dining-room,  we  had  to  warm  our  hands 
with  our  plates  before  we  could  hold  our  spoons.  From 
time  to  time  the  weather  varied,  as  it  does  in  Europe 
(American  weather  is  of  an  exemplary  constancy  in 
comparison),  and  three  or  four  times  a  day  it  rained, 
and  three  or  four  times  it  cleared;  but  through  all  the 
wind  blew  cold  and  colder.  We  were  promised,  how 
ever,  that  the  hotel  would  not  close  till  October,  and 
we  made  shift,  with  a  warm  chimney  in  one  room  and 
three  gas-burners  in  another,  if  not  to  keep  warm  quite, 
yet  certainly  to  get  used  to  the  cold. 


In  the  mean  time  the  sea-bathing  went  resolutely 
on  with  all  its  forms.     Every  morning  the  bathing- 

95 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

machines  were  drawn  down  to  the  beach  from  the  espla 
nade,  where  they  were  secured  against  the  gale  every 
night;  and  every  day  a  half-dozen  hardy  invalids 
braved  the  rigors  of  wind  and  wave.  At  the  discreet 
distance  which  one  ought  always  to  keep  one  could 
not  always  be  sure  whether  these  bold  bathers  were 
mermen  or  mermaids;  fcfr  the  sea  costume  of  both 
sexes  is  the  same  here,  as  regards  an  absence  of  skirts 
and  a  presence  of  what  are,  after  the  first  plunge,  ef 
fectively  tights.  The  first  time  I  walked  down  to 
the  beach  I  was  puzzled  to  make  out  some  object  roll 
ing  about  in  the  low  surf,  which  looked  like  a  barrel, 
and  which  two  bathing-machine  men  were  watching 
with  apparently  the  purpose  of  fishing  it  out.  Sud 
denly  this  object  reared  itself  from  the  surf  and  floun 
dered  towards  the  steps  of  a  machine ;  then  I  saw  that 
it  was  evidently  not  a  barrel,  but  a  lady,  and  after 
that  I  never  dared  carry  my  researches  so  far.  I  sup 
pose  that  the  bathing-tights  are  more  becoming  in  some 
cases  than  in  others ;  but  I  hold  to  a  modest  preference 
for  skirts,  however  brief,  in  the  sea-gear  of  ladies. 
Without  them  there  may  sometimes  be  the  effect  of 
beauty,  and  sometimes  the  effect  of  barrel. 

For  the  convenience  and  safety  of  the  bathers  there 
were,  even  in  the  last  half  of  September,  some  twenty 
machines,  and  half  as  many  bath-men  and  bath-wom 
en,  who  waded  into  the  water  and  watched  that  the 
bathers  came  to  no  harm,  instead  of  a  solitary  life 
guard  showing  his  statuesque  shape  as  he  paced  the 
shore  beside  the  life-lines,  or  cynically  rocked  in  his 
boat  beyond  the  breakers,  as  the  custom  is  on  Long 
Island.  Here  there  is  no  need  of  life-lines,  and,  unless 
one  held  his  head  resolutely  under  water,  I  do  not  see 
how  he  could  drown  within  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the 
shore.  Perhaps  it  is  to  prevent  suicide  that  the  bath- 
men  are  so  plentifully  provided. 


LAST    DAYS    IN   A   DUTCH    HOTEL 

They  are  a  provision  of  the  hotel,  I  believe,  which 
does  not  relax  itself  in  any  essential  towards  its  guests 
as  they  grow  fewer.     It  seems,   on  the  contrary,  to 
use  them  with  a  more  tender  care,  and  to  console  them 
as  it  may  for  the  inevitable  parting   near  at  hand. 
Now,  within  three  or  four  days  of  the  end,  the  kitchen 
is  as  scrupulously  and  vigilantly  perfect  as  it  could 
be  in  the  height  of  the  season;  and  our  dwindling 
numbers  sit  down  every  night  to  a  dinner  that  we 
could  not  get  for  much  more  love  or  vastly  more  money 
in  the  month  of  August,  at  any  shore  hotel  in  Amer 
ica.     It  is  true  that  there  are  certain  changes   going 
on,  but  they  are  going  on  delicately,  almost  silently. 
A  strip  of  carpeting  has  come  up  from  along  our  cor 
ridor,  but  we  hardly  miss  it  from  the  matting  which 
remains.     Through  the  open  doors  of  vacant  cham 
bers  we  can  see  that  beds  are  coming  down,  and  the 
dismantling  extends  into  the  halls  at  places.     Certain 
decorative  carved   chairs   which   repeated   themselves 
outside  the  doors  have  ceased  to  be  there ;  but  the  pict 
ures  still  hang  on  the  walls,  and  within  our  own  rooms 
everything  is  as  conscientious  as  in  midsummer.    The 
service  is  instant,  and,  if  there  is  some  change  in  it, 
the  change  is  not  for  the  worse.     Yesterday  our  waiter 
bade  me  good-bye,  and  when  I  said  I  was  sorry  he  was 
going  he  alleged  a  boil  on  his  cheek  in  excuse ;  he  would 
not  allow  that  his  going  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
closing  of  the  hotel,  and  he  was  promptly  replaced  by 
another  who  speaks  excellent  English.     Now  that  the 
first  is  gone,  I  may  own  that  he  seemed  not  to  speak 
any  foreign   language   long,   but,  when   cornered   in 
English,  took  refuge  in  French,  and  then  fled  from 
pursuit  in  that  to  German,  and  brought  up  in  final 
Dutch,  where  he  was  practically  inaccessible. 

The  elevator  runs  regularly,  if  not  rapidly;  the  pa 
pers  arrive  unfailingly  in  the  reading-room,  includ- 
7  97 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

ing  a  solitary  London  Times,  which  even  I  do  not  read, 
perhaps  because  I  have  no  English-reading  rival  to 
contend  for  it  with.  Till  yesterday,  an  English  artist 
sometimes  got  it;  but  he  then  instantly  offered  it  to 
me ;  and  I  had  to  refuse  it  because  I  would  not  be  out 
done  in  politeness.  Now  even  he  is  gone,  and  on  all 
sides  I  find  myself  in  an  unbroken  circle  of  Dutch  and 
German,  where  no  one  would  dispute  the  Times  with 
me  if  he  could. 

Every  night  the  corridors  are  fully  lighted,  and 
some  mornings  swept,  while  the  washing  that  goes 
on  all  over  Holland,  night  and  morning,  does  not  al 
ways  spare  our  unfrequented  halls  and  stairs.  I  note 
these  little  facts,  for  the  contrast  with  those  of  an  Amer 
ican  hotel  which  we  once  assisted  in  closing,  and  where 
the  elevator  stopped»two  weeks  before  we  left,  and  we 
fell  from  electricity  to  naphtha-gas,  and  even  this  died 
out  before  us  except  at  long  intervals  in  the  passages  ; 
while  there  were  lightning  changes  in  the  service,  and 
a  final  failure  of  it  till  we  had  to  go  down  and  get  our 
own  ice-water  of  the  lingering  room-clerk,  after  the  last 
bell-boy  had  winked  out. 

n 

But  in  Europe  everything  is  permanent,  and  in  Amer 
ica  everything  is  provisional.  This  is  the  great  dis 
tinction  which,  if  always  kept  in  mind,  will  save  a  great 
deal  of  idle  astonishment.  It  is  in  nothing  more  appar 
ent  than  in  the  preparation  here  at  Scheveningen  for 
centuries  of  summer  visitors,  while  at  our  Long  Island 
hotel  there  was  a  losing  bet  on  a  scant  generation  of 
them.  When  it  seemed  likely  that  it  might  be  a  win 
ning  bet  the  sand  was  planked  there  in  front  of  the 
hotel  to  the  sea  with  spruce  boards.  It  was  very  hand 
somely  planked,  but  it  was  never  afterwards  touched, 

98 


LAST    DAYS    IN   A   DUTCH    HOTEL 

apparently,  for  any  manner  of  repairs.  Here,  for 
half  a  mile  the  dune  on  which  the  hotel  stands  is  shored 
up  with  massive  masonry,  and  bricked  for  carriages, 
and  tiled  for  foot-passengers ;  and  it  is  all  kept  as  clean 
as  if  wheel  or  foot  had  never  passed  over  it.  I  am  sure 
that  there  is  not  a  broken  brick  or  a  broken  tile  in  the 
whole  length  or  breadth  of  it.  But  the  hotel  here  is 
not  a  bet ;  it  is  a  business.  It  has  come  to  stay ;  and 
on  Long  Island  it  had  come  to  see  how  it  would  like  it. 

Beyond  the  walk  and  drive,  however,  the  dunes  are 
left  to  the  winds,  and  to  the  vegetation  with  which  the 
Dutch  planting  clothes  them  against  the  winds.  First 
a  coarse  grass  or  rush  is  sown;  then  a  finer  herbage 
comes;  then  a  tough  brushwood,  with  flowers  and 
blackberry- vines ;  so  that  while  the  seawrard  slopes 
of  the  dunes  are  somewhat  patched  and  tattered,  the 
landward  side  and  all  the  pleasant  hollows  between 
are  fairly  held  against  such  gales  as  on  Long  Island 
blow  the  lower  dunes  hither  and  yon.  The  sheep 
graze  in  the  valleys  at  some  points;  in  many  a 
little  pocket  of  the  dunes  I  found  a  potato -patch  of 
about  the  bigness  of  a  city  lot,  and  on  week-days  I 
sa\v  wooden-shod  men  slowly,  slowly  gathering  in 
the  crop.  On  Sundays  I  saw  the  pleasant  nooks  and 
corners  of  these  sandy  hillocks  devoted,  as  the  dunes 
of  Long  Island  were,  to  whispering  lovers,  who  are 
here  as  freely  and  fearlessly  affectionate  as  at  home. 
Rocking  there  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  in  the  nature  of 
things,  as  there  used  to  be  at  Mount  Desert ;  but  what 
is  called  Twoing  at  York  Harbor  is  perfectly  practicable. 

It  is  practicable  not  only  in  the  nooks  and  corners  of 
the  dunes,  but  on  discreeter  terms  in  those  hooded  wil 
low  chairs,  so  characteristic  of  the  Dutch  sea -side. 
These,  if  faced  in  pairs  towards  each  other,  must  be  as 
favorable  to  the  exchange  of  vows  as  of  opinions,  and 
if  the  crowd  is  ever  very  great,  perhaps  one  chair  could 

99 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

be  made  to  hold  two  persons.  It  was  distinctly  a  pang, 
the  other  day,  to  see  men  carrying  them  up  from  the 
beach,  and  putting  them  away  to  hibernate  in  the  base 
ment  of  the  hotel.  Not  all,  but  most  of  them,  were 
taken;  though  I  dare  say  that  on  fine  days  through 
out  October  they  will  go  trooping  back  to  the  sands 
on  the  heads  of  the  same  men,  like  a  procession  of  mon 
strous,  two-legged  crabs.  Such  a  day  was  last  Sun 
day,  and  then  the  beach  offered  a  lively  image  of  its 
summer  gayety.  It  was  dotted  with  hundreds  of 
hooded  chairs,  which  foregathered  in  gossiping  groups 
or  confidential  couples;  and  as  the  sun  shone  quite 
warm  the  flaps  of  the  little  tents  next  the  dunes  were 
let  down  against  it,  and  ladies  in  summer  white  saved 
themselves  from  sunstroke  in  their  shelter.  The 
wooden  booths  for  the  sale  of  candies  and  mineral 
waters,  and  beer  and  sandwiches,  were  flushed  with  a 
sudden  prosperity,  so  that  when  I  went  to  buy  my 
pound  of  grapes  from  the  good  woman  who  under 
stands  my  Dutch,  I  dreaded  an  indifference  in  her 
which  by  no  means  appeared.  She  welcomed  me  as 
warmly  as  if  I  had  been  her  sole  customer,  and  did 
not  put  up  the  price  on  me ;  perhaps  because  it  was  al 
ready  so  very  high  that  her  imagination  could  not  rise 
above  it. 

Ill 

The  hotel  showed  the  same  admirable  constancy. 
The  restaurant  was  thronged  with  new-comers,  who 
spread  out  even  over  the  many-tabled  esplanade  be 
fore  it ;  but  it  was  in  no  wise  demoralized.  That  night 
we  sat  down  in  multiplied  numbers  to  a  table  d'hote 
of  serenely  unconscious  perfection  ;  and  we  perma 
nent  guests — alas!  we  are  now  becoming  transient, 
too — were  used  with  unfaltering  recognition  of  our 
superior  worth.  We  shared  the  respect  which,  all  over 

100 


LAST    DAYS   IN   A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

Europe,  attaches  to  establishment,  and  which  some 
times  makes  us  poor  Americans  wish  for  a  hereditary 
nobility,  so  that  we  could  all  mirror  our  ancestral  value 
in  the  deference  of  our  inferiors.  Where  we  should 
get  our  inferiors  is  another  thing,  but  I  suppose  we 
could  import  them  for  the  purpose,  if  the  duties  were 
not  too  great  under  our  tariff. 

We  have  not  yet  imported  the  idea  of  a  European 
hotel  in  any  respect,  though  we  long  ago  imported 
what  we  call  the  European  plan.  No  travelled  Amer 
ican  knows  it  in  the  extortionate  prices  of  rooms  when 
he  gets  home,  or  the  preposterous  charges  of  our  restau 
rants,  where  one  portion  of  roast  beef  swimming  in  a 
lake  of  lukewarm  juice  costs  as  much  as  a  diversi 
fied  and  delicate  dinner  in  Germany  or  Holland.  But 
even  if  there  were  any  proportion  in  these  things  the 
European  hotel  will  not  be  with  us  till  we  have  the 
European  portier,  who  is  its  spring  and  inspiration. 
He  must  not,  dear  home-keeping  reader,  be  at  all  im 
agined  in  the  moral  or  material  figure  of  our  hotel 
porter,  who  appears  always  in  his  shirt  -  sleeves,  and 
speaks  with  the  accent  of  Cork  or  of  Congo.  The  Eu 
ropean  portier  wears  a  uniform,  I  do  not  know  why, 
and  a  gold-banded  cap,  and  he  inhabits  a  little  office 
at  the  entrance  of  the  hotel.  He  speaks  eight  or  ten 
languages,  up  to  certain  limit,  rather  better  than  peo 
ple  born  to  them,  and  his  presence  commands  an 
instant  reverence  softening  to  affection  under  his  uni 
versal  helpfulness.  There  is  nothing  he  cannot  tell 
you,  cannot  do  for  you;  and  you  may  trust  yourself 
implicitly  to  him.  He  has  the  priceless  gift  of  making 
each  nationality,  each  personality,  believe  that  he  is 
devoted  to  its  service  alone.  He  turns  lightly  from 
one  language  to  another,  as  if  he  had  each  under  his 
tongue,  and  he  answers  simultaneously  a  fussy  French 
woman,  an  angry  English  tourist,  a  stiff  Prussian 

101 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

major,  and  a  thin-voiced  American  girl  in  behalf  of  a 
timorous  mother,  and  he  never  mixes  the  replies.  He 
is  an  inexhaustible  bottle  of  dialects;  but  this  is  the 
least  of  his  merits,  of  his  miracles. 

Our  portier  here  is  a  tall,  slim  Dutchman  (most 
Dutchmen  are  tall  and  slim),  and  in  spite  of  the  wan 
ing  season  he  treats  me  as  if  I  were  multitude,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  uses  me  with  the  distinction  due 
the  last  of  his  guests.  Twenty  times  in  as  many 
hours  he  wishes  me  good-day,  putting  his  hand  to  his 
cap  for  the  purpose;  and  to  oblige  me  he  wears  silver 
braid  instead  of  gilt  on  his  cap  and  coat.  I  apologized 
yesterday  for  troubling  him  so  often  for  stamps,  and 
said  that  I  supposed  he  was  much  more  bothered  in 
the  season. 

"Between  the  first  of  August  and  the  fifteenth," 
he  answered,  "you  cannot  think.  All  that  you  can 
do  is  to  say,  Yes,  No;  Yes,  No."  And  he  left  me  to 
imagine  his  responsibilities. 

I  am  sure  he  will  hold  out  to  the  end,  and  will  smile 
me  a  friendly  farewell  from  the  door  of  his  office,  which 
is  also  his  dining-room,  as  I  know  from  often  disturb 
ing  him  at  his  meals  there.  I  have  no  fear  of  the  wait 
ers  either,  or  of  the  little  errand-boys  who  wear  suits 
of  sailor  blue,  and  touch  their  foreheads  when  they 
bring  you  your  letters  like  so  many  ancient  sea-dogs. 
I  do  not  know  why  the  elevator-boy  prefers  a  suit  of 
snuff-color;  but  I  know  that  he  will  salute  us  as  we 
step  out  of  his  elevator  for  the  last  time  as  unfalteringly 
as  if  we  had  just  arrived  at  the  beginning  of  the  sum 
mer. 

IV 

It  is  our  last  day  in  the  hotel  at  Scheveningen,  and 
I  will  try  to  recall  in  their  pathetic  order  the  events  of 
the  final  week. 

102 


LAST   DAYS   IN   A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

Nothing  has  been  stranger  throughout  than  the 
fluctuation  of  the  guests.  At  times  they  have  dwin 
dled  to  so  small  a  number  that  one  must  reckon  chief 
ly  upon  their  quality  for  consolation;  at  other  times 
they  swelled  to  such  a  tide  as  to  overflow  the  table, 
long  or  short,  at  dinner,  and  eddy  round  a  second 
board  beside  it.  There  have  been  nights  when  I  have 
walked  down  the  long  corridor  to  my  seaward  room 
through  a  harking  solitude  of  empty  chambers;  there 
have  been  mornings  when  I  have  come  out  to  break 
fast  past  door-mats  cheerful  with  boots  of  both  sexes, 
and  door-post  hooks  where  dangling  coats  and  trousers 
peopled  the  place  with  a  lively  if  a  somewhat  flaccid 
semblance  of  human  presence.  The  worst  was  that, 
when  some  one  went,  we  lost  a  friend,  and  when  some 
one  came  we  only  won  a  stranger. 

Among  the  first  to  go  were  the  kindly  English  folk 
whose  acquaintance  we  made  across  the  table  the  first 
night,  and  who  took  with  them  so  large  a  share  of 
our  facile  affections  that  we  quite  forgot  the  ances 
tral  enmities,  and  grieved  for  them  as  much  as  if  they 
had  been  Amencans.  There  have  been,  in  fact,  no 
Americans  here  but  ourselves,  and  we  have  done  what 
we  could  with  the  Germans  who  spoke  English.  The 

nicest  of  these  were  a  charming  family  from  F , 

father  and  mother,  and  son  and  daughter,  with  whom 
we  had  a  pleasant  week  of  dinners.  At  the  very  first 
we  disagreed  with  the  parents  so  amicably  about  Ibsen 
and  Sudermann  that  I  was  almost  sorry  to  have  the 
son  take  our  modern  side  of  the  controversy  and  de 
clare  himself  an  admirer  of  those  authors  with  us. 
Our  frank  literary  difference  established  a  kindness 
between  us  that  was  strengthened  by  our  community 
of  English,  and  when  they  went  they  left  us  to  the 
sympathy  of  another  German  family  with  whom  we 
had  mainly  our  humanity  in  common.  They  spoke 

103 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

no  English,  and  I  only  a  German  which  they  must 
have  understood  with  their  hearts  rather  than  their 
heads,  since  it  consisted  chiefly  of  good- will.  But 
in  the  air  of  their  sweet  natures  it  flourished  surpris 
ingly,  and  sufficed  each  day  for  praise  of  the  weather 
after  it  began  to  be  fine,  and  at  parting  for  some  fond 
regrets,  not  unmixed  with  philosophical  reflections, 
sadly  perplexed  in  the  genders  and  the  order  of  the 
verbs :  with  me  the  verb  will  seldom  wait,  as  it  should 
in  German,  to  the  end.  Both  of  these  families,  very 
different  in  social  tradition,  I  fancied,  were  one  in  the 
amiability  which  makes  the  alien  forgive  so  much 
militarism  to  the  German  nation,  and  hope  for  its  final 
escape  from  the  drill-sergeant.  When  they  went,  we 
were  left  for  some  meals  to  our  own  American  tongue, 
with  a  brief  interval  of  that  English  painter  and  his 
wife  with  whom  we  spoke  our  language  as  nearly  like 
English  as  we  could.  Then  followed  a  desperate  lunch 
and  dinner  where  an  unbroken  forest  of  German,  and 
a  still  more  impenetrable  morass  of  Dutch,  hemmed  us 
in.  But  last  night  it  was  our  joy  to  be  addressed  in 
our  own  speech  by  a  lady  who  spoke  it  as  admirably  as 

our  dear  friends  from  F .    She  was  Dutch,  and  when 

she  found  we  were  Americans  she  praised  our  histo 
rian  Motley,  and  told  us  how  his  portrait  is  gratefully 
honored  with  a  place  in  the  Queen's  palace,  The  House 
in  the  Woods,  near  Scheveningen. 


She  had  come  up  from  her  place  in  the  country, 
four  hours  away,  for  the  last  of  the  concerts  here,  which 
have  been  given  throughout  the  summer  by  the  best 
orchestra  in  Europe,  and  which  have  been  thronged 
every  afternoon  and  evening  by  people  from  The  Hague. 

104 


LAST   DAYS   IN   A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

One  honored  day  this  week  even  the  Queen  and  the 
Queen  Mother  came  down  to  the  concert,  and  gave 
us  incomparably  the  greatest  event  of  our  waning 
season.  I  had  noticed  all  the  morning  a  floral  per 
turbation  about  the  main  entrance  of  the  hotel,  which 
settled  into  the  form  of  banks  of  autumnal  bloom  on 
either  side  of  the  specially  carpeted  stairs,  and  put 
forth  on  the  roof  of  the  arcade  in  a  crown,  much  bigger 
round  than  a  barrel,  of  orange-colored  asters,  in  honor 
of  the  Queen's  ancestral  house  of  Orange.  Flags  of 
blue,  white,  and  red  fluttered  nervously  about  in  the 
breeze  from  the  sea,  and  imparted  to  us  an  agreeable 
anxiety  not  to  miss  seeing  the  Queens,  as  the  Dutch 
succinctly  call  their  sovereign  and  her  parent ;  and  at 
three  o'clock  we  saw  them  drive  up  to  the  hotel.  Cer 
tain  officials  in  civil  dress  stood  at  the  door  of  the  con 
cert-room  to  usher  the  Queens  in,  and  a  bareheaded, 
bald-headed  dignity  of  military  figure  backed  up  the 
stairs  before  them.  I  would  not  rashly  commit  my 
self  to  particulars  concerning  their  dress,  but  I  am 
sure  that  the  elder  Queen  wore  black,  and  the  younger 
white.  The  mother  has  one  of  the  best  and  wisest 
faces  I  have  seen  any  woman  wear  (and  most  of  the 
good,  wise  faces  in  this  imperfectly  balanced  world 
are  women's)  and  the  daughter  one  of  the  sweetest 
and  prettiest.  Pretty  is  the  word  for  her  face,  and 
it  showed  pink  through  her  blond  veil,  as  she  smiled 
and  bowed  right  and  left;  her  features  are  small  and 
fine,  and  she  is  not  above  the  middle  height. 

As  soon  as  she  had  passed  into  the  concert-room, 
we  who  had  waited  to  see  her  go  in  ran  round  to  an 
other  door  and  joined  the  two  or  three  thousand  peo 
ple  who  were  standing  to  receive  the  Queens.  These 
had  already  mounted  to  the  royal  box,  and  they  stood 
there  while  the  orchestra  played  one  of  the  Dutch  na 
tional  airs.  (One  air  is  not  enough  for  the  Dutch; 

105 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

they  must  have  two.)  Then  the  mother  faded  some 
where  into  the  background,  and  the  daughter  sat 
alone  in  the  front,  on  a  gilt  throne,  with  a  gilt  crown 
at  top,  and  a  very  uncomfortable  carved  Gothic  back. 
She  looked  so  young,  so  gentle,  and  so  good  that  the 
rudest  Republican  could  not  have  helped  wishing 
her  well  out  of  a  position  so  essentially  and  irrepara 
bly  false  as  a  hereditary  sovereign's.  One  forgot  in 
the  presence  of  her  innocent  seventeen  years  that  most 
of  the  ruling  princes  of  the  world  had  left  it  the  worse 
for  their  having  been  in  it ;  at  moments  one  forgot  her 
altogether  as  a  princess,  and  saw  her  only  as  a  charm 
ing  young  girl,  who  had  to  sit  up  rather  stiffly. 

At  the  end  of  the  programme  the  Queens  rose  and 
walked  slowly  out,  while  the  orchestra  played  the 
other  national  air. 

VI 

I  call  them  the  Queens,  because  the  Dutch  do;  and 
I  like  Holland  so  much  that  I  should  hate  to  differ 
with  the  Dutch  in  anything.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  are  neither  of  them  quite  Queens;  the  mother  is 
the  regent  and  the  daughter  will  not  be  crowned  till 
next  year. 

But,  such  as  they  are,  they  imparted  a  supreme 
emotion  to  our  dying  season,  and  thrilled  the  hotel 
with  a  fulness  of  summer  life.  Since  they  went,  the 
season  faintly  pulses  and  respires,  so  that  one  can 
just  say  that  it  is  still  alive.  Last  Sunday  was  fine, 
and  great  crowds  came  down  from  The  Hague  to  the 
concert,  and  spread  out  on  the  seaward  terrace  of  the 
hotel,  around  the  little  tables  which  I  fancied  that 
the  waiters  had  each  morning  wiped  dry  of  the  dew, 
from  a  mere  Dutch  desire  of  cleaning  something.  The 
hooded  chairs  covered  the  beach;  the  children  played 

1 06 


V 


•s   { 
"55?  > 


\ 


^•Sfc 


••ft 


PRETTY    IS    THE    WORD    FOR    HER    FACE 


LAST   DAYS   IN  A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

in  the  edges  of  the  surf  and  delved  in  the  sand;  the 
lovers  wandered  up  into  the  hollows  of  the  dunes. 

There  was  only  the  human  life,  however.  I  have 
looked  in  vain  for  the  crabs,  big  and  little,  that  swarm 
on  the  Long  Island  shore,  and  there  are  hardly  any 
gulls,  even;  perhaps  because  there  are  no  crabs  for 
them  to  eat,  if  they  eat  crabs ;  I  never  saw  gulls  doing 
it,  but  they  must  eat  something.  Dogs  there  are,  of 
course,  wherever  there  are  people;  but  they  are  part 
of  the  human  life.  Dutch  dogs  are  in  fact  very  hu 
man  ;  and  one  I  saw  yesterday  behaved  quite  as  badly 
as  a  bad  boy,  with  respect  to  his  muzzle.  He  did  not 
like  his  muzzle,  and  by  dint  of  turning  somersaults 
in  the  sand  he  got  it  off,  and  went  frolicking  to  his 
master  in  triumph  to  show  him  what  he  had  done. 


VII 

It  is  now  the  last  day,  and  the  desolation  is  thicken 
ing  upon  our  hotel.  This  morning  the  door-posts 
up  and  down  my  corridor  showed  not  a  single  pair  of 
trousers;  not  a  pair  of  boots  flattered  the  lonely  door 
mats.  In  the  lower  hall  I  found  the  tables  of  the  great 
dining-room  assembled,  and  the  chairs  inverted  on 
them  with  their  legs  in  the  air;  but  decently,  deco 
rously,  not  with  the  reckless  abandon  displayed  by 
the  chairs  in  our  Long  Island  hotel  for  weeks  before  it 
closed.  In  the  smaller  dining-room  the  table  was  set 
for  lunch  as  if  we  were  to  go  on  dining  there  forever; 
in  the  breakfast  -  room  the  service  and  the  provision 
were  as  perfect  as  ever.  The  coffee  was  good,  the 
bread  delicious,  the  butter  of  an  unfaltering  sweet 
ness;  and  the  glaze  of  wear  on  the  polished  dress- 
coats  of  the  waiters  as  respectable  as  it  could  have 
been  on  the  first  day  of  the  season.  All  was  correct, 

107 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

and  if  of  a  funereal  correctness  to  me,  I  am  sure  this 
effect  was  purely  subjective. 

The  little  bell-boys  in  sailor  suits  (perhaps  they 
ought  to  be  spelled  bell-buoys)  clustered  about  the 
elevator-boy  like  so  many  Roman  sentinels  at  their 
posts;  the  elevator-boy  and  his  elevator  were  ready 
to  take  us  up  or  down  at  any  moment. 

The  portier  and  I  ignored  together  the  hour  of  part 
ing,  which  we  had  definitely  ascertained  and  agreed 
upon,  and  we  exchanged  some  compliments  to  the 
weather,  which  is  now  settled,  as  if  we  expected  to 
enjoy  it  long  together.  I  rather  dread  going  in  to 
lunch,  however,  for  I  fear  the  empty  places. 


VIII 

All  is  over;  we  are  off.  The  lunch  was  an  heroic 
effort  of  the  hotel  to  hide  the  fact  of  our  separation. 
It  was  perfect,  unless  the  boiled  beef  was  a  confession 
of  human  weakness;  but  even  this  boiled  beef  was 
exquisite,  and  the  horseradish  that  went  with  it  was 
so  mellowed  by  art  that  it  checked  rather  than  pro 
voked  the  parting  tear.  The  table  d'hote  had  reserved 
a  final  surprise  for  us;  and  when  we  sat  down  with 
the  fear  of  nothing  but  German  around  us,  we  heard 
the  sound  of  our  own  speech  from  the  pleasantest  Eng 
lish  pair  we  had  yet  encountered;  and  the  travelling 
English  are  pleasant;  I  will  say  it,  who  am  said  by 
Sir  Walter  Besant  to  be  the  only  American  who  hates 
their  nation.  It  was  really  an  added  pang  to  go,  on 
their  account,  but  the  carriage  was  waiting  at  the 
door;  the  domestique  had  already  carried  our  baggage 
to  the  steam -tram  station;  the  kindly  menial  train 
formed  around  us  for  an  ultimate  douceur,  and  we 
were  off,  after  the  portier  had  shut  us  into  our  vehicle 

108 


LAST   DAYS    IN   A   DUTCH   HOTEL 

and  touched  his  oft-touched  cap  for  the  last  time,  while 
the  hotel  facade  dissembled  its  grief  by  architectural 
ly  smiling  in  the  soft  Dutch  sun. 

I  liked  this  manner  of  leaving  better  than  carrying 
part  of  my  own  baggage  to  the  train,  as  I  had  to  do 
on  Long  Island,  though  that,  too,  had  its  charm;  the 
charm  of  the  whole  fresh,  pungent  American  life, 
which  at  this  distance  is  so  dear. 


SOME  ANOMALIES   OF   THE    SHORT   STORY 

THE  interesting  experiment  of  one  of  our  great 
publishing  houses  in  putting  out  serially  sev 
eral  volumes  of  short  stories,  with  the  hope  that  a 
courageous  persistence  may  overcome  the  popular 
indifference  to  such  collections  when  severally  ad 
ministered,  suggests  some  questions  as  to  this  eldest 
form  of  fiction  which  I  should  like  to  ask  the  reader's 
patience  with.  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  be  able  to 
answer  them,  or  that  1  shall  try  to  do  so;  the  vitality 
of  a  question  that  is  answered  seems  to  exhale  in  the 
event;  it  palpitates  no  longer;  curiosity  flutters  away 
from  the  faded  flower,  which  is  fit  then  only  to  be  fold 
ed  away  in  the  hortus  siccus  of  accomplished  facts.  In 
view  of  this  I  may  wish  merely  to  state  the  problems 
and  leave  them  for  the  reader's  solution,  or,  more  amus 
ingly,  for  his  mystification. 


One  of  the  most  amusing  questions  concerning  the 
vshort  story  is  why  a  form  which  is  singly  so  attrac 
tive  that  every  one  likes  to  read  a  short  story  when 
he  finds  it  alone  is  collectively  so  repellent  as  it  is  said 
to  be.  Before  now  I  have  imagined  the  case  to  be 
somewhat  the  same  as  that  of  a  number  of  pleasant 
people  who  are  most  acceptable  as  separate  house 
holders,  but  who  lose  caste  and  cease  to  be  desirable 
acquaintances  when  gathered  into  a  boarding-house. 

no 


SOME  ANOMALIES   OF   THE   SHORT   STORY 

Yet  the  case  is  not  the  same  quite,  for  we  see  that  the 
short  story  where  it  is  ranged  with  others  of  its  species 
within  the  covers  of  a  magazine  is  so  welcome  that 
the  editor  thinks  his  number  the  more  brilliant  the 
more  short  story  writers  he  can  call  about  his  board, 
or  under  the  roof  of  his  pension.  Here  the  boarding- 
house  analogy  breaks,  breaks  so  signally  that  I  was 
lately  moved  to  ask  a  distinguished  editor  why  a  book 
of  short  stories  usually  failed  and  a  magazine  usu 
ally  succeeded  because  of  them.  He  answered,  gayly, 
that  the  short  stories  in  most  books  of  them  were  bad ; 
that  where  they  were  good,  they  went;  and  he  al 
leged  several  well-known  instances  in  which  books 
of  prime  short  stories  had  a  great  vogue.  He  was 
so  handsomely  interested  in  my  inquiry  that  I  could 
not  well  say  I  thought  some  of  the  short  stories  which 
he  had  boasted  in  his  last  number  were  indifferent  good, 
and  yet,  as  he  allowed,  had  mainly  helped  sell  it.  I 
had  in  mind  many  books  of  short  stories  of  the  first 
excellence  which  had  failed  as  decidedly  as  those  others 
had  succeeded,  for  no  reason  that  I  could  see ;  possibly 
there  is  really  no  reason  in  any  literary  success  or  fail 
ure  that  can  be  predicted,  or  applied  in  another  case. 
I  could  name  these  books,  if  it  would  serve  any  pur 
pose,  but,  in  my  doubt,  I  will  leave  the  reader  to  think 
of  them,  for  I  believe  that  his  indolence  or  intellectual 
reluctance  is  largely  to  blame  for  the  failure  of  good 
books  of  short  stories.  He  is  commonly  so  averse  to 
any  imaginative  exertion  that  he  finds  it  a  hardship 
to  respond  to  that  peculiar  demand  which  a  book  of 
good  short  stories  makes  upon  him.  He  can  read  one 
good  short  story  in  a  magazine  with  refreshment,  and 
a  pleasant  sense  of  excitement,  in  the  sort  of  spur  it 
gives  to  his  own  constructive  faculty.  But,  if  this  is 
repeated  in  ten  or  twenty  stories,  he  becomes  fluttered 
and  exhausted  by  the  draft  upon  his  energies;  where 
in 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

as  a  continuous  fiction  of  the  same  quantity  acts  as 
an  agreeable  sedative.  V^A  condition  that  the  short 
story  tacitly  makes  with  the  reader,  through  its  limi 
tations,  is  that  he  shall  subjectively  fill  in  the  details 
and  carry  out  the  scheme  which  in  its  small  dimen 
sions  the  story  can  only  suggest;,)  and  the  greater 
number  of  readers  find  this  too  much  for  their  feeble 
powers,  while  they  cannot  resist  the  incitement  to  at 
tempt  it. 

My  theory  does  not  wholly  account  for  the  fact  (no 
theory  wholly  accounts  for  any  fact),  and  I  own  that 
the  same  objections  would  lie  from  the  reader  against 
a  number  of  short  stories  in  a  magazine.  But  it  may 
be  that  the  effect  is  not  the  same  in  the  magazine  be 
cause  of  the  variety  in  the  authorship,  and  because 
it  would  be  impossibly  jolting  to  read  all  the  short 
stories  in  a  magazine  seriatim.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  identity  of  authorship  gives  a  continuity  of  at 
traction  to  the  short  stories  in  a  book  which  forms 
that  exhausting  strain  upon  the  imagination  of  the 
involuntary  co-partner. 

II 

Then,  what  is  the  solution  as  to  the  form  of  pub 
lication  for  short  stories,  since  people  do  not  object  to 
them  singly  but  collectively,  and  not  in  variety,  but 
in  identity  of  authorship?  Are  they  to  be  printed  only 
in  the  magazines,  or  are  they  to  be  collected  in  volumes 
combining  a  variety  of  authorship?  Rather,  1  could 
wish,  it  might  be  found  feasible  to  purvey  them  in 
some  pretty  shape  where  each  would  appeal  singly 
to  the  reader  and  would  not  exhaust  him  in  the  sub 
jective  after-work  required  of  him.  In  this  event  many 
short  stories  now  cramped  into  undue  limits  by  the 
editorial  exigencies  of  the  magazines  might  expand 

112 


SOME  ANOMALIES   OF  THE   SHORT   STORY 

to  greater  length  and  breadth,  and  without  ceasing 
to  be  each  a  short  story  might  not  make  so  heavy  a 
demand  upon  the  subliminal  forces  of  the  reader. 

If  any  one  were  to  say  that  all  this  was  a  little  fan 
tastic,  I  should  not  contradict  him ;  but  I  hope  there  is 
some  reason  in  it,  if  reason  can  help  the  short  story  to 
greater  favor,  for  it  is  a  form  which  I  have  great  pleas 
ure  in  as  a  reader,  and  pride  in  as  an  American.  If 
we  have  not  excelled  all  other  moderns  in  it,  we  have 
certainly  excelled  in  it;  possibly  because  we  are  in 
the  period  of  our  literary  development  which  corre 
sponds  to  that  of  other  peoples  when  the  short  story 
pre-eminently  flourished  among  them.  But  when  one 
has  said  a  thing  like  this,  it  immediately  accuses  one 
of  loose  and  inaccurate  statement,  and  requires  one 
to  refine  upon  it,  either  for  one's  own  peace  of  con 
science  or  for  one's  safety  from  the  thoughtful  reader. 
I  am  not  much  afraid  of  that  sort  of  reader,  for  he  is 
very  rare,  but  I  do  like  to  know  myself  what  I  mean, 
if  I  mean  anything  in  particular. 

In  this  instance  I  am  obliged  to  ask  myself  whether 
our  literary  development  can  be  recognized  separate 
ly  from  that  of  the  whole  English-speaking  world.  I 
think  it  can,  though,  as  I  am  always  saying  Amer 
ican  literature  is  merely  a  condition  of  English  litera 
ture.  In  some  sense  every  European  literature  is  a 
condition  of  some  other  European  literature,  yet  the 
impulse  in  each  eventuates,  if  it  does  not  originate 
indigenously.  A  younger  literature  will  choose,  by  a 
sort  of  natural  selection,  some  things  for  assimilation 
from  an  elder  literature,  for  no  more  apparent  reason 
than  it  will  reject  other  things,  and  it  will  transform 
them  in  the  process  so  that  it  will  give  them  the  effect 
of  indigeneity.  The  short  story  among  the  Italians, 
who  called  it  the  novella,  and  supplied  us  with  the 
name  devoted  solely  among  us  to  fiction  of  epical  mag- 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

nitude,  refined  indefinitely  upon  the  Greek  romance,  if 
it  derived  from  that ;  it  retrenched  itself  in  scope,  and 
enlarged  itself  in  the  variety  of  its  types.  But  still 
these  remained  types,  and  they  remained  types  with 
the  French  imitators  of  the  Italian  novella.  It  was  not 
till  the  Spaniards  borrowed  the  form  of  the  novella  and 
transplanted  it  to  their  racier  soil  that  it  began  to  bear 
character,  and  to  fruit  in  the  richness  of  their  pica 
resque  fiction.  When  the  English  borrowed  it  they 
adapted  it,  in  the  metrical  tales  of  Chaucer,  to  the  ge 
nius  of  their  nation,  which  was  then  both  poetical  and 
humorous.  Here  it  was  full  of  character,  too,  and  more 
and  more  personality  began  to  enlarge  the  bounds 
of  the  conventional  types  and  to  imbue  fresh  ones. 
But  in  so  far  as  the  novella  was  studied  in  the  Italian 
sources,  the  French,  Spanish,  and  English  literatures 
were  conditions  of  Italian  literature  as  distinctly, 
though,  of  course,  not  so  thoroughly,  as  American 
literature  is  a  condition  of  English  literature.  Each 
borrower  gave  a  national  cast  to  the  thing  borrowed, 
and  that  is  what  has  happened  with  us,  in  the  full 
measure  that  our  nationality  has  differenced  itself 
from  the  English. 

Whatever  truth  there  is  in  all  this,  and  I  will  con 
fess  that  a  good  deal  of  it  seems  to  me  hardy  conject 
ure,  rather  favors  my  position  that  we  are  in  some 
such  period  of  our  literary  development  as  those  other 
peoples  when  the  short  story  flourished  among  them. 
Or,  if  I  restrict  our  claim,  I  may  safely  claim  that  they 
abundantly  had  the  novella  when  they  had  not  the 
novel  at  all,  and  we  now  abundantly  have  the  novella, 
while  we  have  the  novel  only  subordinately  and  of 
at  least  no  such  quantitative  importance  as  the  Eng 
lish,  French,  Spanish,  Norwegians,  Russians,  and 
some  others  of  our  esteemed  contemporaries,  not  to 
name  the  Italians.  We  surpass  the  Germans,  who, 

114 


SOME  ANOMALIES   OF   THE   SHORT   STORY 

like  ourselves,  have  as  distinctly  excelled  in  the  mod 
ern  novella  as  they  have  fallen  short  in  the  novel. 
Or,  if  I  may  not  quite  say  this,  I  will  make  bold  to  say 
that  I  can  think  of  many  German  novelle  that  I  should 
like  to  read  again,  but  scarcely  one  German  novel; 
and  I  could  honestly  say  the  same  of  American  novelle, 
though  not  of  American  novels. 

Ill 

The  abeyance,  not  to  say  the  desuetude,  that  the 
novella  fell  into  for  several  centuries  is  very  curious, 
and  fully  as  remarkable  as  the  modern  rise  of  the  short 
story.  It  began  to  prevail  in  the  dramatic  form,  for 
a  play  is  a  short  story  put  on  the  stage;  it  may  have 
satisfied  in  that  form  the  early  love  of  it,  and  it  has 
continued  to  please  in  that  form;  but  in  its  original 
shape  it  quite  vanished,  unless  we  consider  the  little 
studies  and  sketches  and  allegories  of  the  Spectator 
and  Taller  and  Idler  and  Rambler  and  their  imita 
tions  on  the  Continent  as  guises  of  the  novella.  The 
germ  of  the  modern  short  story  may  have  survived 
in  these,  or  in  the  metrical  form  of  the  novella  which 
appeared  in  Chaucer  and  never  wholly  disappeared. 
With  Crabbe  the  novella  became  as  distinctly  the  short 
story  as  it  has  become  in  the  hands  of  Miss  Wilkins. 
But  it  was  not  till  our  time  that  its  great  merit  as  a 
form  was  felt,  for  until  our  time  so  great  work  was 
never  done  with  it.  I  remind  myself  of  Boccaccio, 
and  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  without  the  wish  to  hedge 
from  my  bold  stand.  They  are  all  elemental;  com 
pared  with  some  finer  modern  work  which  deepens 
inward  immeasurably,  they  are  all  of  their  superficial 
limits.  They  amuse,  but  they  do  not  hold,  the  mind 
and  stamp  it  with  large  and  profound  impressions. 

An   Occidental   cannot   judge   the   literary   quality 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

of  the  Eastern  tales ;  but  I  will  own  my  suspicion  that 
the  perfection  of  the  Italian  work  is  philological  rather 
than  artistic,  while  the  web  woven  by  Mr.  James  or 
Miss  Jewett,  by  Kielland  or  Bjo"rnson,  by  Maupas 
sant,  by  Palacio  Valde"s,  by  Giovanni  Verga,  by  Tour- 
guenief,  in  one  of  those  little  frames  seems  to  me  of  an 
exquisite  color  and  texture  and  of  an  entire  literary 
preciousness,  not  only  as  regards  the  diction,  but  as 
regards  those  more  intangible  graces  of  form,  those 
virtues  of  truth  and  reality,  and  those  lasting  signifi 
cances  which  distinguish  the  masterpiece. 

The  novella  has  in  fact  been  carried  so  far  in  the 
short  story  that  it  might  be  asked  whether  it  had  not 
left  the  novel  behind,  as  to  perfection  of  form;  though 
one  might  not  like  to  affirm  this.  Yet  there  have  been 
but  few  modern  fictions  of  the  novel's  dimensions 
which  have  the  beauty  of  form  many  a  novella  em 
bodies.  Is  this  because  it  is  easier  to  give  form  in 
the  small  than  in  the  large,  or  only  because  it  is  easier 
to  hide  formlessness?  It  is  easier  to  give  form  in  the 
novella  than  in  the  novel,  because  the  design  of  less 
scope  cari"  be  more  definite,  and  because  the  persons 
and  facts  are  fewer,  and  each  can  be  more  carefully 
treated.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  slightest  error 
in  execution  shows  more  in  the  small  than  in  the  large, 
and  a  fault  of  conception  is  more  evident.  The  novella 
must  be  clearly  imagined,  above  all  things,  for  there 
is  no  room  in  it  for  those  felicities  of  characterization  or 
comment  by  which  the  artist  of  faltering  design  saves 
himself  in  the  novel. 

IV 

The  question  as  to  where  the  short  story  distin 
guishes  itself  from  the  anecdote  is  of  the  same  nat 
ure  as  that  which  concerns  the  bound  set  between 

116 


SOME  ANOMALIES   OF   THE   SHORT   STORY 

it  and  the  novel.  In  both  cases  the  difference  of  the 
novella  is  in  the  motive,  or  the  origination.  The 
anecdote  is  too  palpably  simple  and  single  to  be  re 
garded  as  a  novella,  though  there  is  now  and  then 
a  novella  like  The  Father,  by  Bjornson,  which  is  of 
the  actual  brevity  of  the  anecdote,  but  which,  when 
released  in  the  reader's  consciousness,  expands  to 
dramatic  dimensions  impossible  to  the  anecdote.  Many 
anecdotes  have  come  down  from  antiquity,  but  not,  I 
believe,  one  short  story,  at  least  in  prose ;  and  the  Ital 
ians,  if  they  did  not  invent  the  story,  gave  us  some 
thing  most  sensibly  distinguishable  from  the  classic 
anecdote  in  the  novella.  The  anecdote  offers  an  il 
lustration  of  character,  or  records  a  moment  of  action; 
the  novella  embodies  a  drama  and  develops  a  type. 

It  is  not  quite  so  clear  as  to  when  and  where  a  piece 
of  fiction  ceases  to  be  a  novella  and  becomes  a  novel. 
The  frontiers  are  so  vague  that  one  is  obliged  to  recog 
nize  a  middle  species,  or  rather  a  middle  magnitude, 
which  paradoxically,  but  necessarily  enough,  we 
call  the  novelette.  First  we  have  the  short  story,  or 
novella,  then  we  have  the  long  story,  or  novel,  and 
between  these  we  have  the  novelette,  which  is  in  name 
a  smaller  than  the  short  story,  though  it  is  in  point  of 
fact  two  or  three  times  longer  than  a  short  story.  We 
may  realize  them  physically  if  we  will  adopt  the  maga 
zine  parlance  and  speak  of  the  novella  as  a  one-number 
story,  of  the  novel  as  a  serial,  and  of  the  novelette  as 
a  two-number  or  a  three-number  story;  if  it  passes 
the  three-number  limit  it  seems  to  become  a  novel. 
As  a  two-number  or  three-number  story  it  is  the  de 
spair  of  editors  and  publishers.  The  interest  of  so 
brief  a  serial  will  not  mount  sufficiently  to  carry  strong 
ly  over  from  month  to  month;  when  the  tale  is  com 
pleted  it  will  not  make  a  book  which  the  Trade  (in 
exorable  forcel)  cares  to  handle.  It  is  therefore  still 

117 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

awaiting  its  authoritative  avatar,  which  it  will  be  some 
one's  prosperity  and  glory  to  imagine ;  for  in  the  novel 
ette  are  possibilities  for  fiction  as  yet  scarcely  divined. 

The  novelette  can  have  almost  as  perfect  form  as 
the  novella.  In  fact,  the  novel  has  form  in  the  meas 
ure  that  it  approaches  the  novelette;  and  some  of  the 
most  symmetrical  modern  novels  are  scarcely  more 
than  novelettes,  like  Tourgue*nief's  Dmitri  Rudine, 
or  his  Smoke,  or  Spring  Floods.  The  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field,  the  father  of  the  modern  novel,  is  scarcely  more 
than  a  novelette,  and  I  have  sometimes  fancied,  but 
no  doubt  vainly,  that  the  ultimated  novel  might  be 
of  the  dimensions  of  Hamlet.  If  any  one  should  say 
there  was  not  room  in  Hamlet  for  the  character  and 
incident  requisite  in  a  novel,  I  should  be  ready  to  an 
swer  that  there  seemed  a  good  deal  of  both  in  Hamlet. 

But  no  doubt  there  are  other  reasons  why  the  novel 
should  not  finally  be  of  the  length  of  Hamlet,  and  I 
must  not  let  my  enthusiasm  for  the  novelette  carry  me 
too  far,  or,  rather,  bring  me  up  too  short.  I  am  dis 
posed  to  dwell  upon  it,  I  suppose,  because  it  has  not 
yet  shared  the  favor  which  the  novella  and  the  novel 
have  enjoyed,  and  because  until  somebody  invents  a 
way  for  it  to  the  public  it  cannot  prosper  like  the  one- 
number  story  or  the  serial.  I  should  like  to  say  as 
my  last  word  for  it  here  that  I  believe  there  are  many 
novels  which,  if  stripped  of  their  padding,  would  turn 
out  to  have  been  all  along  merely  novelettes  in  disguise. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  there  are  many 
novelle  which,  if  they  were  duly  padded,  would  be 
found  novelettes.  In  that  dim,  subjective  region 
where  the  aesthetic  origins  present  themselves  almost 
with  the  authority  of  inspirations  there  is  nothing 
clearer  than  the  difference  between  the  short -story 
motive  and  the  long-story  motive.  One,  if  one  is  in 
that  line  of  work,  feels  instinctively  just  the  size  and 

118 


SOME   ANOMALIES   OF  THE   SHORT   STORY 

carrying  power  of  the  given  motive.  Or,  if  the  reader 
prefers  a  different  figure,  the  mind  which  the  seed 
has  been  dropped  into  from  Somewhere  is  mystically 
aware  whether  the  seed  is  going  to  grow  up  a  bush 
or  is  going  to  grow  up  a  tree,  if  left  to  itself.  Of  course, 
the  mind  to  which  the  seed  is  intrusted  may  play  it 
false,  and  wilfully  dwarf  the  growth,  or  force  it  to 
unnatural  dimensions;  but  the  critical  observer  will 
easily  detect  the  fact  of  such  treasons.  Almost  in  the 
first  germinal  impulse  the  inventive  mind  forefeels 
the  ultimate  difference  and  recognizes  the  essential 
simplicity  or  complexity  of  the  motive.  There  will 
be  a  prophetic  subdivision  into  a  variety  of  motives 
and  a  multiplication  of  characters  and  incidents  and 
situations;  or  the  original  motive  will  be  divined  in 
divisible,  and  there  will  be  a  small  group  of  people 
immediately  interested  and  controlled  by  a  single,  or 
predominant,  fact.  The  uninspired  may  contend  that 
this  is  bosh,  and  I  own  that  something  might  be  said  for 
their  contention,  but  upon  the  whole  I  think  it  is  gospel. 
The  right  novel  is  never  a  congeries  of  novelle,  as 
might  appear  to  the  uninspired.  If  it  indulges  even 
in  episodes,  it  loses  in  reality  and  vitality.  It  is  one 
stock  from  which  its  various  branches  put  out,  and 
form  it  a  living  growth  identical  throughout.  The 
right  novella  is  never  a  novel  cropped  back  from  the 
size  of  a  tree  to  a  bush,  or  the  branch  of  a  tree  stuck 
into  the  ground  and  made  to  serve  for  a  bush.  It  is 
another  species,  destined  by  the  agencies  at  work  in  the 
realm  of  unconsciousness  to  be  brought  into  being  of  its 
own  kind,  and  not  of  another. 


This  was  always  its  case,  but  in  the  process  of  time 
the  short  story,  while  keeping  the  natural  limits  of 

119 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

the  primal  novella  (if  ever  there  was  one),  has  shown 
almost  limitless  possibilities  within  them.  It  has 
shown  itself  capable  of  imparting  the  effect  of  every 
sort  of  intention,  whether  of  humor  or  pathos,  of  trag 
edy  or  comedy  or  broad  farce  or  delicate  irony,  of 
character  or  action.  The  thing  that  first  made  itself 
known  as  a  little  tale,  usually  salacious,  dealing  with 
conventionalized  types  and  conventionalized  inci 
dents,  has  proved  itself  possibly  the  most  flexible  of 
all  the  literary  forms  in  its  adaptation  to  the  needs 
of  the  mind  that  wishes  to  utter  itself,  inventively  or 
constructively,  upon  some  fresh  occasion,  or  wishes 
briefly  to  criticise  or  represent  some  phase  or  fact  of 
life. 

The  riches  in  this  shape  of  fiction  are  effectively 
inestimable,  if  we  consider  what  has  been  done  in  the 
short  story,  and  is  still  doing  everywhere.  The  good 
novels  may  be  easily  counted,  but  the  good  novelle, 
since  Boccaccio  began  (if  it  was  he  that  first  began) 
to  make  them,  cannot  be  computed.  In  quantity  they 
are  inexhaustible,  and  in  quality  they  are  wonder 
fully  satisfying.  Then,  why  is  it  that  so  very,  very 
few  of  the  most  satisfactory  of  that  innumerable  mul 
titude  stay  by  you,  as  the  country  people  say,  in  char 
acterization  or  action?  How  hard  it  is  to  recall  a 
person  or  a  fact  out  of  any  of  them,  out  of  the  most 
signally  good!  We  seem  to  be  delightfully  nourished 
as  we  read,  but  is  it,  after  all,  a  full  meal?  We  become 
of  a  perfect  intimacy  and  a  devoted  friendship  with 
the  men  and  women  in  the  short  stones,  but  not  ap 
parently  of  a  lasting  acquaintance.  It  is  a  single 
meeting  we  have  with  them,  and  though  we  instantly 
love  or  hate  them  dearly,  recurrence  and  repetition 
seem  necessary  to  that  familiar  knowledge  in  which 
we  hold  the  personages  in  a  novel. 

It  is  here  that  the  novella,  so  much  more  perfect  in 

120 


SOME   ANOMALIES   OF  THE   SHORT  STORY 

form,  shows  its  irremediable  inferiority  to  the  novel, 
and  somehow  to  the  play,  to  the  very  farce,  which  it 
may  quantitatively  excel.  We  can  all  recall  by  name 
many  characters  out  of  comedies  and  farces;  but  how 
many  characters  out  of  short  stories  can  we  recall? 
Most  persons  of  the  drama  give  themselves  away  by 
name  for  types,  mere  figments  of  allegory,  and  per 
haps  oblivion  is  the  penalty  that  the  novella  pays 
for  the  fineness  of  its  characterizations;  but  perhaps, 
also,  the  dramatic  form  has  greater  facilities  for  repe 
tition,  and  so  can  stamp  its  persons  more  indelibly  on 
the  imagination  than  the  narrative  form  in  the  same 
small  space.  The  narrative  must  give  to  description 
what  the  drama  trusts  to  representation;  but  this  can 
not  account  for  the  superior  permanency  of  the  dra 
matic  types  in  so  great  measure  as  we  might  at  first 
imagine,  for  they  remain  as  much  in  mind  from  read 
ing  as  from  seeing  the  plays.  It  is  possible  that  as 
the  novella  becomes  more  conscious,  its  persons  will 
become  more  memorable;  but  as  it  is,  though  we  now 
vividly  and  with  lasting  delight  remember  certain 
short  stories,  we  scarcely  remember  by  name  any  of 
the  people  in  them.  I  may  be  risking  too  much  in 
offering  an  instance,  but  who,  in  even  such  signal  in 
stances  as  The  Revolt  of  Mother,  by  Miss  Wilkins,  or 
TJte  Dulham  Ladies,  by  Miss  Jewett,  can  recall  by 
name  the  characters  that  made  them  delightful? 


VI 

The  defect  of  the  novella  which  we  have  been  ac 
knowledging  seems  an  essential  limitation;  but  per 
haps  it  is  not  insuperable ;  and  we  may  yet  have  short 
stories  which  shall  supply  the  delighted  imagination 
with  creations  of  as  much  immortality  as  we  can  rea- 

121 


LITERATURE  AND    LIFE 

sonably  demand.  The  structural  change  would  not 
be  greater  than  the  moral  or  material  change  which 
has  been  wrought  in  it  since  it  began  as  a  yarn,  gross 
and  palpable,  which  the  narrator  spun  out  of  the 
coarsest  and  often  the  filthiest  stuff,  to  snare  the  thick 
,  fancy  or  amuse  the  lewd  leisure  of  listeners  willing 
as  children  to  have  the  same  persons  and  the  same 
things  over  and  over  again.  Now  it  has  not  only 
varied  the  persons  and  things,  but  it  has  refined  and 
verified  them  in  the  direction  of  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  until  it  is  above  all  other  literary  forms 
the  vehicle  of  reality  and  spirituality.  When  one 
thinks  of  a  bit  of  Mr.  James's  psychology  in  this  form, 
or  a  bit  of  Verga's  or  Kielland's  sociology,  or  a  bit  of 
Miss  Jewett's  exquisite  veracity,  one  perceives  the  im 
mense  distance  which  the  short  story  has  come  on  the 
way  to  the  height  it  has  reached.  It  serves  equally 
the  ideal  and  the  real;  that  which  it  is  loath  to  serve 
is  the  unreal,  so  that  among  the  short  stories  which 
have  recently  made  reputations  for  their  authors 
very  few  are  of  that  peculiar  cast  which  we  have  no 
name  for  but  romanticistic.  The  only  distinguished 
modern  writer  of  romanticistic  novelle  whom  I  can 
think  of  is  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  and  he  is  of  a  period  when 
romanticism  was  so  imperative  as  to  be  almost  a  con 
dition  of  fiction.  I  am  never  so  enamoured  of  a  cause 
that  I  will  not  admit  facts  that  seem  to  tell  against  it, 
and  I  will  allow  that  this  writer  of  romanticistic  short 
stories  has  more  than  any  other  supplied  us  with  mem 
orable  types  and  characters.  We  remember  Mr.  John 
Oakhurst  by  name;  we  remember  Kentuck  and  Ten 
nessee's  Pa  tner,  at  least  by  nickname;  and  we  re 
member  their  several  qualities.  These  figures,  if  we 
cannot  quite  consent  that  they  are  persons,  exist  in 
our  memories  by  force  of  their  creator's  imagination, 
and  at  the  moment  I  cannot  think  of  any  others  that 

122 


SOME   ANOMALIES   OF  THE   SHORT   STORY 

do,  out  of  the  myriad  of  American  short  stories,  ex 
cept  Rip  Van  Winkle  out  of  Irving's  Legend  of  Sleepy 
Hollow,  and  Marjorie  Daw  out  of  Mr.  Aldrich's  fa 
mous  little  caprice  of  that  title,  and  Mr.  James's  Daisy 
Miller. 

It  appears  to  be  the  fact  that  those  writers  who  have 
first  distinguished  themselves  in  the  novella  have 
seldom  written  novels  of  prime  order.  Mr.  Kipling  is 
an  eminent  example,  but  Mr.  Kipling  has  yet  a  long 
life  before  him  in  which  to  upset  any  theory  about 
him,  and  one  can  only  instance  him  provisionally. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  can  be  much  more  confident 
that  the  best  novelle  have  been  written  by  the  greatest 
novelists,  conspicuously  Maupassant,  Verga,  Bjorn- 
son,  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  Mr.  James,  Mr.  Cable,  Tour- 
guenief,  Tolstoy,  Valdes,  not  to  name  others.  These 
have,  in  fact,  all  done  work  so  good  in  this  form  that 
one  is  tempted  to  call  it  their  best  work.  It  is  really 
not  their  best,  but  it  is  work  so  good  that  it  ought  to 
have  equal  acceptance  with  their  novels,  if  that  dis 
tinguished  editor  was  right  who  said  that  short  stories 
sold  well  when  they  were  good  short  stories.  That 
they  ought  to  do  so  is  so  evident  that  a  devoted  reader 
of  them,  to  whom  I  was  submitting  the  anomaly  the 
other  day,  insisted  that  they  did.  I  could  only  allege 
the  testimony  of  publishers  and  authors  to  the  con 
trary,  and  this  did  not  satisfy  him. 

It  does  not  satisfy  me,  and  I  wish  that  the  general 
reader,  with  whom  the  fault  lies,  could  be  made  to  say 
why,  if  he  likes  one  short  story  by  itself  and  four  short 
stories  in  a  magazine,  he  does  not  like,  or  will  not  have, 
a  dozen  short  stories  in  a  book.  This  was  the  baffling 
question  which  I  began  with  and  which  I  find  myself 
forced  to  end  with,  after  all  the  light  I  have  thrown 
upon  the  subject.  I  leave  it  where  I  found  it,  but  per 
haps  that  is  a  good  deal  for  a  critic  to  do.  If  I  had 

123 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

left  it  anywhere  else  the  reader  might  not  feel  bound 
to  deal  with  it  practically  by  reading  all  the  books  of 
short  stories  he  could  lay  hands  on,  and  either  divin 
ing  why  he  did  not  enjoy  them,  or  else  forever  fore 
going  his  prejudice  against  them  because  of  his  pleas 
ure  in  them. 


A  CIRCUS   IN  THE  SUBURBS 

WE  dwellers  in  cities  and  large  towns,  if  we  are 
well-to-do,  have  more  than  our  fill  of  pleasures 
of  all  kinds;  and  for  now  many  years  past  we  have 
been  used  to  a  form  of  circus  where  surfeit  is  nearly 
as  great  misery  as  famine  in  that  kind  could  be.  For 
our  sins,  or  some  of  our  friends'  sins,  perhaps,  we  have 
now  gone  so  long  to  circuses  of  three  rings  and  two 
raised  platforms  that  we  scarcely  realize  that  in  the 
country  there  are  still  circuses  of  one  ring  and  no  plat 
form  at  all.  We  are  accustomed,  in  the  gross  and 
foolish  superfluity  of  these  city  circuses,  to  see  no  feat 
quite  through,  but  to  turn  our  greedy  eyes  at  the  most 
important  instant  in  the  hope  of  greater  wonders  in 
another  ring.  We  have  four  or  five  clowns,  in  as  many 
varieties  of  grotesque  costume,  as  well  as  a  lady  clown 
in  befitting  dress;  but  we  hear  none  of  them  speak, 
not  even  the  lady  clown,  while  in  tr^e  country  circus 
the  old  clown  of  our  childhood,  one  and  indivisible, 
makes  the  same  style  of  jokes,  if  not  the  very  same 
jokes,  that  we  used  to  hear  there.  It  is  not  easy  to 
believe  all  this,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  should  quite 
believe  it  myself  if  I  had  not  lately  been  witness  of 
it  in  the  suburban  village  where  I  was  passing  the 
summer. 


The  circus  announced  itself  in  the  good  old  way 
weeks  beforehand  by  the  vast  posters  of  former  days 
and  by  a  profusion  of  small  bills  which  fell  upon  the 

125 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

village  as  from  the  clouds,  and  left  it  littered  every 
where  with  their  festive  pink.  They  prophesied  it  in 
a  name  borne  by  the  first  circus  I  ever  saw,  which  was 
also  an  animal  show,  but  the  animals  must  all  have 
died  during  the  fifty  years  past,  for  there  is  now  no 
menagerie  attached  to  it.  I  did  not  know  this  when 
I  heard  the  band  braying  through  the  streets  of  the 
village  on  the  morning  of  the  performance,  and  for 
me  the  mangy  old  camels  and  the  pimpled  elephants 
of  yore  led  the  procession  through  accompanying 
ranks  of  boys  who  have  mostly  been  in  their  graves 
for  half  a  lifetime;  the  distracted  ostrich  thrust  an 
advertising  neck  through  the  top  of  its  cage,  and  the 
lion  roared  to  himself  in  the  darkness  of  his  moving 
prison.  I  felt  the  old  thrill  of  excitement,  the  vain 
hope  of  something  preternatural  and  impossible,  and 
I  do  not  know  what  could  have  kept  me  from  that  cir 
cus  as  soon  as  I  had  done  lunch.  My  heart  rose  at 
sight  of  the  large  tent  (which  was  yet  so  very  little  in 
comparison  with  the  tents  of  the  three-ring  and  two- 
platform  circuses) ;  the  alluring  and  illusory  side 
shows  of  fat  women  and  lean  men ;  the  horses  tethered 
in  the  background  and  stamping  under  the  fly-bites; 
the  old,  weather  -  beaten  grand  chariot,  which  looked 
like  the  ghost  of  the  grand  chariot  which  used  to  drag 
me  captive  in  its  triumph;  and  the  canvas  shelters 
where  the  cooks  were  already  at  work  over  their  ket 
tles  on  the  evening  meal  of  the  circus  folk. 

I  expected  to  be  kept  a  long  while  from  the  ticket- 
wagon  by  the  crowd,  but  there  was  no  crowd,  and  per 
haps  there  never  used  to  be  much  of  a  crowd.  I  bought 
my  admittances  without  a  moment's  delay,  and  the 
man  who  sold  me  my  reserve  seats  had  even  leisure 
to  call  me  back  and  ask  to  look  at  the  change  he  had 
given  me,  mostly  nickels.  "I  thought  I  didn't  give 
you  enough/'  he  said,  and  he  added  one  more,  and 

126 


A   CIRCUS   IN   THE   SUBURBS 

sent  me  on  to  the  doorkeeper  with  my  faith  in  human 
nature  confirmed  and  refreshed. 

It  was  cool  enough  outside,  but  within  it  was  very 
warm,  as  it  should  be,  to  give  the  men  with  palm-leaf 
fans  and  ice-cold  lemonade  a  chance.  They  were 
already  making  their  rounds,  and  crying  their  wares 
with  voices  from  the  tombs  of  the  dead  past;  and  the 
child  of  the  young  mother  who  took  my  seat-ticket 
from  me  was  going  to  sleep  at  full  length  on  the  lower 
most  tread  of  the  benches,  so  that  I  had  to  step  across 
its  prostrate  form.  These  reserved  seats  were  car 
peted;  but  P  had  forgotten  how  little  one  rank  was 
raised  above  another,  and  how  very  trying  they  were 
upon  the  back  and  legs.  But  for  the  carpeting,  I 
could  not  see  how  I  was  advantaged  above  the  com 
moner  folk  in  the  unreserved  seats,  and  I  reflected  how 
often  in  this  world  we  paid  for  an  inappreciable  splen 
dor.  I  could  not  see  but  they  were  as  well  off  as  I; 
they  were  much  more  gayly  dressed,  and  some  of  them 
were  even  smoking  cigars,  while  they  were  nearly  all 
younger  by  ten,  twenty,  forty,  or  fifty  years,  and  even 
more.  They  did  not  look  like  the  country  people  whom 
I  rather  hoped  and  expected  to  see,  but  were  appar 
ently  my  fellow-villagers,  in  different  stages  of  ex 
citement.  They  manifested  by  the  usual  signs  their 
impatience  to  have  the  performance  begin,  and  I  con 
fess  that  I  shared  this,  though  I  did  not  take  part  in 
the  demonstration. 

II 

I  have  no  intention  of  following  the  events  seriatim. 
From  time  to  time  during  their  progress  I  renewed 
my  old  one-sided  acquaintance  with  the  circus- men. 
They  were  quite  the  same  people,  I  believe,  but  strange 
ly  softened  and  ameliorated,  as  I  hope  I  am,  and  look 
ing  not  a  day  older,  which  I  cannot  say  of  myself, 

127 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

exactly.  The  supernumeraries  were  patently  farmer 
boys  who  had  entered  newly  upon  that  life  in  a  spirit 
of  adventure,  and  who  wore  their  partial  liveries,  a 
braided  coat  here  and  a  pair  of  striped  trousers  there, 
with  a  sort  of  timorous  pride,  a  deprecating  bravado, 
as  if  they  expected  to  be  hooted  by  the  spectators  and 
were  very  glad  when  they  were  not.  The  man  who 
went  round  with  a  dog  to  keep  boys  from  hooking  in 
under  the  curtain  had  grown  gentler,  and  his  dog  did 
not  look  as  if  he  would  bite  the  worst  boy  in  town. 
The  man  came  up  and  asked  the  young  mother  about 
her  sleeping  child,  and  I  inferred  that  the  child  had 
been  sick,  and  was  therefore  unusually  interesting 
to  all  the  great,  kind-hearted,  simple  circus  family. 
He  was  good  to  the  poor  supes,  and  instructed  them, 
not  at  all  sneeringly,  how  best  to  manage  the  guy- 
ropes  for  the  nets  when  the  trapeze  events  began. 

There  was,  in  fact,  an  air  of  pleasing  domesticity 
diffused  over  the  whole  circus.  This  was,  perhaps, 
partly  an  effect  from  our  extreme  proximity  to  its  per 
formances;  I  had  never  been  on  quite  such  intimate 
terms  with  equitation  and  aerostation  of  all  kinds; 
but  I  think  it  was  also  largely  from  the  good  hearts 
of  the  whole  company.  A  circus  must  become,  dur 
ing  the  season,  a  great  brotherhood  and  sisterhood, 
especially  sisterhood,  and  its  members  must  forget 
finally  that  they  are  not  united  by  ties  of  blood.  I 
dare  say  they  often  become  so,  as  husbands  and  wives 
and  fathers  and  mothers,  if  not  as  brothers. 

The  domestic  effect  was  heightened  almost  poig 
nantly  when  a  young  lady  in  a  Turkish  -  towel  bath- 
gown  came  out  and  stood  close  by  the  band,  waiting 
for  her  act  on  a  barebacked  horse  of  a  conventional 
pattern.  She  really  looked  like  a  young  goddess  in 
a  Turkish  -  towel  bath -gown:  goddesses  must  have 
worn  bath-gowns,  especially  Venus,  who  was  often 

128 


A   CIRCUS   IN   THE   SUBURBS 

imagined  in  the  bath,  or  just  out  of  it.  But  when  this 
goddess  threw  off  her  bath-gown,  and  came  bound 
ing  into  the  ring  as  gracefully  as  the  clogs  she  wore 
on  her  slippers  would  let  her,  she  was  much  more  mod 
estly  dressed  than  most  goddesses.  What  I  am  trying 
to  say,  however,  is  that,  while  she  stood  there  by  the 
band,  she  no  more  interested  the  musicians  than  if 
she  were  their  collective  sister.  They  were  all  in  their 
shirt  -  sleeves  for  the  sake  of  the  coolness,  and  they 
banged  and  trumpeted  and  fluted  away  as  indifferent 
to  her  as  so  many  born  brothers. 

Indeed,  when  the  gyrations  of  her  horse  brought 
her  to  our  side  of  the  ring,  she  was  visibly  not  so  youth 
ful  and  not  so  divine  as  she  might  have  been;  but 
the  girl  who  did  the  trapeze  acts,  and  did  them  won 
derfully,  left  nothing  to  be  desired  in  that  regard; 
though  really  I  do  not  see  why  we  who  have  neither 
youth  nor  beauty  should  always  expect  it  of  other 
people.  I  think  it  would  have  been  quite  enough  for 
her  to  do  the  trapeze  acts  so  perfectly;  but  her  being 
so  pretty  certainly  added  a  poignancy  to  the  contem 
plation  of  her  perils.  One  could  follow  every  motion 
of  her  anxiety  in  that  close  proximity:  the  tremor  of 
her  chin  as  she  bit  her  lips  before  taking  her  flight 
through  the  air,  the  straining  eagerness  of  her  eye  as 
she  measured  the  distance,  the  frown  with  which  she 
forbade  herself  any  shrinking  or  reluctance. 

Ill 

How  strange  is  life,  how  sad  and  perplexing  its 
contradictions!  Why  should  such  an  exhibition  as 
that  be  supposed  to  give  pleasure?  Perhaps  it  does 
not  give  pleasure,  but  is  only  a  necessary  fulfilment 
of  one  of  the  many  delusions  we  are  in  with  regard  to 
each  other  in  this  bewildering  world.  They  are  of 

9  129 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

all  sorts  and  degrees,  these  delusions,  and  I  suppose 
that  in  the  last  analysis  it  was  not  pleasure  I  got  from 
the  clown  and  his  clowning,  clowned  he  ever  so  mer 
rily.  I  remember  that  I  liked  hearing  his  old  jokes, 
not  because  they  were  jokes,  but  because  they  were  old 
and  endeared  by  long  association.  He  sang  one  song 
which  I  must  have  heard  him  sing  at  my  first  circus 
(I  am  sure  it  was  he),  about  "Things  that  I  don't  like 
to  see/'  and  I  heartily  agreed  with  him  that  his  book 
of  songs,  which  he  sent  round  to  be  sold,  was  fully 
worth  the  half-dime  asked  for  it,  though  I  did  not  buy  it. 
Perhaps  the  rival  author  in  me  withheld  me,  but, 
as  a  brother  man,  I  will  not  allow  that  I  did  not  feel 
for  him  and  suffer  with  him  because  of  the  thick, 
white  pigment  which  plentifully  coated  his  face,  and, 
with  the  sweat  drops  upon  it,  made  me  think  of  a 
newly  painted  wall  in  the  rain.  He  was  infinitely 
older  than  his  personality,  than  his  oldest  joke  (though 
you  never  can  be  sure  how  old  a  joke  is),  and,  repre 
sentatively,  I  dare  say  he  outdated  the  pyramids.  They 
must  have  made  clowns  whiten  their  faces  in  the  dawn 
of  time,  and  no  doubt  there  were  drolls  among  the 
antediluvians  who  enhanced  the  effect  of  their  fun  by 
that  means.  All  the  same,  I  pitied  this  clown  for  it, 
and  I  fancied  in  his  wildest  waggery  the  note  of  a 
real  irascibility.  Shall  I  say  that  he  seemed  the  only 
member  of  that  little  circus  who  was  not  of  an  ami 
able  temper?  But  I  do  not  blame  him,  and  I  think 
it  much  to  have  seen  a  clown  once  more  who  jested 
audibly  with  the  ringmaster  and  always  got  the  better 
of  him  in  repartee.  It  was  long  since  I  had  known  that 
pleasure. 

IV 

Throughout  the  performance   at  this  circus  I  was 
troubled  by  a  curious  question,  whether  it  were  really 

130 


A    CIRCUS    IN  THE    SUBURBS 

- 

of  the  same  moral  and  material  grandeur  as  the  cir 
cuses  it  brought  to  memory,  or  whether  these  were 
thin  and  slight,  too.  We  all  know  how  the  places  of 
our  childhood,  the  heights,  the  distances,  shrink  and 
dwindle  when  we  go  back  to  them,  and  was  it  possible 
that  I  had  been  deceived  in  the  splendor  of  my  early 
circuses?  The  doubt  was  painful,  but  I  was  forced 
to  own  that  there  might  be  more  truth  in  it  than  in  a 
blind  fealty  to  their  remembered  magnificence.  Very 
likely  circuses  have  grown  not  only  in  size,  but  in  the 
richness  and  variety  of  their  entertainments,  and  I 
was  spoiled  for  the  simple  joys  of  this.  But  I  could 
see  no  reflection  of  my  dissatisfaction  on  the  young 
faces  around  me,  and  I  must  confess  that  there  was 
at  least  so  much  of  the  circus  that  I  left  when  it  was 
half  over.  I  meant  to  go  into  the  side-shows  and  see 
the  fat  woman  and  the  living  skeleton,  and  take  the 
giant  by  the  hand  and  the  armless  man  by  his  friendly 
foot,  if  I  might  be  so  honored.  But  I  did  none  of  these 
things,  and  I  am  willing  to  believe  the  fault  was  in 
me,  if  I  was  disappointed  in  the  circus.  It  was  I  who 
had  shrunk  and  dwindled,  and  not  it.  To  real  boys  it 
was  still  the  size  of  the  firmament,  and  was  a  world 
of  wonders  and  delights.  At  least  I  can  recognize 
this  fact  now,  and  can  rejoice  in  the  peaceful  progress 
all  over  the  country  of  the  simple  circuses  which  the 
towns  never  see,  but  which  help  to  render  the  summer 
fairer  and  brighter  to  the  unspoiled  eyes  and  hearts 
they  appeal  to.  I  hope  it  will  be  long  before  they  cease 
to  find  profit  in  the  pleasure  they  give. 


A   SHE   HAMLET 

THE  other  night  as  I  sat  before  the  curtain  of  the 
Garden  Theatre  and  waited  for  it  to  rise  upon 
the  Hamlet  of  Mme.  Bernhardt,  a  thrill  of  the  rich  ex 
pectation  which  cannot  fail  to  precede  the  rise  of  any 
curtain  upon  any  Hamlet  passed  through  my  eager 
frame.  There  is,  indeed,  no  scene  of  drama  which 
is  of  a  finer  horror  (eighteenth-century  horror)  than 
that  which  opens  the  great  tragedy.  The  sentry 
pacing  up  and  down  upon  the  platform  at  Elsinore 
under  the  winter  night;  the  greeting  between  him 
and  the  comrade  arriving  to  relieve  him,  with  its  hints 
of  the  bitter  cold;  the  entrance  of  Horatio  and  Mar- 
cellus  to  these  before  they  can  part;  the  mention  of 
the  ghost,  and,  while  the  soldiers  are  in  the  act  of  pro 
testing  it  a  veridical  phantom,  the  apparition  of  the 
ghost,  taking  the  word  from  their  lips  and  hushing 
all  into  a  pulseless  awe:  what  could  be  more  sim 
ply  and  sublimely  real,  more  naturally  supernatural? 
What  promise  of  high  mystical  things  to  come  there 
is  in  the  mere  syllabling  of  the  noble  verse,  and  how 
it  enlarges  us  from  ourselves,  for  that  time  at  least, 
to  a  disembodied  unity  with  the  troubled  soul  whose 
martyry  seems  foreboded  in  the  solemn  accents!  As 
the  many  Hamlets  on  which  the  curtain  had  risen  in 
my  time  passed  in  long  procession  through  my  mem 
ory,  I  seemed  to  myself  so  much  of  their  world,  and  so 
little  of  the  world  that  arrogantly  calls  itself  the  actual 
one,  that  I  should  hardly  have  been  surprised  to  find 

132 


A   SHE   HAMLET 

myself  one  of  the  less  considered  persons  of  the  drama 
who  were  seen  but  not  heard  in  its  course. 


The  trouble  in  judging  anything  is  that  if  you  have 
the  materials  for  an  intelligent  criticism,  the  case  is 
already  prejudiced  in  your  hands.  You  do  not  bring 
a  free  mind  to  it,  and  all  your  efforts  to  free  your  mind 
are  a  species  of  gymnastics  more  or  less  admirable, 
but  not  really  effective  for  the  purpose.  The  best 
way  is  to  own  yourself  unfair  at  the  start,  and  then 
you  can  have  some  hope  of  doing  yourself  justice, 
if  not  your  subject.  In  other  words,  if  you  went  to 
see  the  Hamlet  of  Mme.  Bernhardt  frankly  expecting 
to  be  disappointed,  you  were  less  likely  in  the  end  to 
be  disappointed  in  your  expectations,  and  you  could 
not  blame  her  if  you  were.  To  be  ideally  fair  to  that 
representation,  it  would  be  better  not  to  have  known 
any  other  Hamlet,  and,  above  all,  the  Hamlet  of  Shake 
speare. 

From  the  first  it  was  evident  that  she  had  three 
things  overwhelmingly  against  her — her  sex,  her  race, 
and  her  speech.  You  never  ceased  to  feel  for  a  mo 
ment  that  it  was  a  woman  who  was  doing  that  melan 
choly  Dane,  and  that  the  woman  was  a  Jewess,  and 
the  Jewess  a  French  Jewess.  These  three  removes 
put  a  gulf  impassable  between  her  utmost  skill  and 
the  impassioned  irresolution  of  that  inscrutable  North 
ern  nature  which  is  in  nothing  so  masculine  as  its 
feminine  reluctances  and  hesitations,  or  so  little  French 
as  in  those  obscure  emotions  which  the  English  poetry 
expressed  with  more  than  Gallic  clearness,  but  which 
the  French  words  always  failed  to  convey.  The  battle 
was  lost  from  the  first,  and  all  you  could  feel  about 

133 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

it  for  the  rest  was  that  if  it  was  magnificent  it  was 
not  war. 

While  the  battle  went  on  I  was  the  more  anxious 
to  be  fair,  because  I  had,  as  it  were,  pre-espoused  the 
winning  side;  and  I  welcomed,  in  the  interest  of  criti 
cal  impartiality,  another  Hamlet  which  came  to  mind, 
through  readily  traceable  associations.  This  was  a 
Hamlet  also  of  French  extraction  in  the  skill  and 
school  of  the  actor,  but  as  much  more  deeply  derived 
than  the  Hamlet  of  Mme.  Bernhardt  as  the  large  im 
agination  of  Charles  Fechter  transcended  in  its  virile 
range  the  effect  of  her  subtlest  womanish  intuition. 
His  was  the  first  blond  Hamlet  known  to  our  stage, 
and  hers  was  also  blond,  if  a  reddish-yellow  wig  may 
stand  for  a  complexion;  and  it  was  of  the  quality  of 
his  Hamlet  in  masterly  technique. 


II 

The  Hamlet  of  Fechter,  which  rose  ghostlike  out 
of  the  gulf  of  the  past,  and  cloudily  possessed  the  stage 
where  the  Hamlet  of  Mme.  Bernhardt  was  figuring, 
was  called  a  romantic  Hamlet  thirty  years  ago;  and 
so  it  was  in  being  a  break  from  the  classic  Hamlets  of 
the  Anglo-American  theatre.  It  was  romantic  as 
Shakespeare  himself  was  romantic,  in  an  elder  sense 
of  the  word,  and  not  romanticistic  as  Dumas  was  ro- 
manticistic.  It  was,  therefore,  the  most  realistic  Ham 
let  ever  yet  seen,  because  the  most  naturally  poetic. 
Mme.  Bernhardt  recalled  it  by  the  perfection  of  her 
school;  for  Fechter's  poetic  naturalness  differed  from 
the  conventionality  of  the  accepted  Hamlets  in  nothing 
so  much  as  the  superiority  of  its  self-instruction.  In 
Mme.  Bernhardt 's  Hamlet,  as  in  his,  nothing  was 
trusted  to  chance,  or  "inspiration."  Good  or  bad, 

134 


"YOU    NEVER    CEASED    TO    FEEL    .    .    .    THAT    IT    WAS    A 
WOMAN   WHO   WAS    DOING   THAT    MELANCHOLY    DANE  " 


A    SHE    HAMLET 

what  one  saw  was  what  was  meant  to  be  seen.  When 
Fechter  played  Edmond  Dantes  or  Claude  Melnotte, 
he  put  reality  into  those  preposterous  inventions,  and 
in  Hamlet  even  his  alien  accent  helped  him  vitalize 
the  part ;  it  might  be  held  to  be  nearer  the  Elizabethan 
accent  than  ours,  and  after  all,  you  said,  Hamlet  was 
a  foreigner,  and  in  your  high  content  with  what  he  gave 
you  did  not  mind  its  being  in  a  broken  vessel.  When 
he  challenged  the  ghost  with  "  I  call  thee  keeng,  father, 
rawl-Danc,"  you  would  hardly  have  had  the  erring 
utterance  bettered.  It  sufficed  as  it  was;  and  when 
he  said  to  Rosencrantz,  "Will  you  pleh  upon  this 
pyip?"  it  was  with  such  a  princely  authority  and  com 
radely  entreaty  that  you  made  no  note  of  the  slips  in 
the  vowels  except  to  have  pleasure  of  their  quaintness 
afterwards.  For  the  most  part  you  were  not  aware  of 
these  bewrayals  of  his  speech;  and  in  certain  high 
things  it  was  soul  interpreted  to  soul  through  the  poetry 
of  Shakespeare  so  finely,  so  directly,  that  there  was 
scarcely  a  sense  of  the  histrionic  means. 

He  put  such  divine  despair  into  the  words,  "Ex 
cept  my  life,  except  my  life,  except  my  life!"  following 
the  mockery  with  which  he  had  assured  Polonius  there 
was  nothing  he  would  more  willingly  part  withal  than 
his  leave,  that  the  heart-break  of  them  had  lingered 
with  me  for  thirty  years,  and  I  had  been  alert  for  them 
with  every  Hamlet  since.  But  before  I  knew,  Mme. 
Bernhardt  had  uttered  them  with  no  effect  whatever. 
Her  Hamlet,  indeed,  cut  many  of  the  things  that  we 
have  learned  to  think  the  points  of  Hamlet,  and  it  so 
transfonned  others  by  its  interpretation  of  the  trans 
lator's  interpretation  of  Shakespeare  that  they  passed 
unrecognized.  Soliloquies  are  the  weak  invention 
of  the  enemy,  for  the  most  part,  but  as  such  things 
go  that  soliloquy  of  Hamlet's,  "To  be  or  not  to  be/' 
is  at  least  very  noble  poetry;  and  yet  Mme.  Bernhardt 

1.35 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

was  so  unimpressive  in  it  that  you  scarcely  noticed 
the  act  of  its  delivery.  Perhaps  this  happened  be 
cause  the  sumptuous  and  sombre  melancholy  of  Shake 
speare's  thought  was  transmitted  in  phrases  that  re 
fused  it  its  proper  mystery.  But  there  was  always  a 
hardness,  not  always  from  the  translation,  upon  this 
feminine  Hamlet.  It  was  like  a  thick  shell  with  no 
crevice  in  it  through  which  the  tenderness  of  Shake 
speare's  Hamlet  could  show,  except  for  the  one  mo 
ment  at  Ophelia's  grave,  where  he  reproaches  Laertes 
with  those  pathetic  words : 

"  What  is  the  reason  that  you  use  me  thus  ? 
I  loved  you  ever ;    but  it  is  no  matter." 

Here  Mme.  Bernhardt  betrayed  a  real  grief,  but  as 
a  woman  would,  and  not  a  man.  At  the  close  of  the 
Gonzago  play,  when  Hamlet  triumphs  in  a  mad  whirl, 
her  Hamlet  hopped  up  and  down  like  a  mischievous 
crow,  a  mischievous  she-crow. 

There  was  no  repose  in  her  Hamlet,  though  there 
were  moments  of  leaden  lapse  which  suggested  phys 
ical  exhaustion;  and  there  was  no  range  in  her  elo 
cution  expressive  of  the  large  vibration  of  that  tor 
mented  spirit.  Her  voice  dropped  out,  or  jerked  itself 
out,  and  in  the  crises  of  strong  emotion  it  was  the  voice 
of  a  scolding  or  a  hysterical  woman.  At  times  her 
movements,  which  she  must  have  studied  so  hard  to 
master,  were  drolly  womanish,  especially  those  of  the 
whole  person.  Her  quickened  pace  was  a  woman's 
nervous  little  run,  and  not  a  man's  swift  stride;  and 
to  give  herself  due  stature,  it  was  her  foible  to  wear 
a  woman's  high  heels  to  her  shoes,  and  she  could  not 
help  tilting  on  them. 

In  the  scene  with  the  queen  after  the  play,  most 
English  and  American  Hamlets  have  required  her  to 
look  upon  the  counterfeit  presentment  of  two  brothers 

136 


A   SHE   HAMLET 

in  miniatures  something  the  size  of  tea  -  plates ;  but 
Mme.  Bernhardt's  preferred  full-length,  life-size  fam 
ily  portraits.  The  dead  king's  effigy  did  not  appear 
a  flattered  likeness  in  the  scene-painter's  art,  but  it 
was  useful  in  disclosing  his  ghost  by  giving  place  to 
it  in  the  wall  at  the  right  moment.  She  achieved  a 
novelty  by  this  treatment  of  the  portraits,  and  she 
achieved  a  novelty  in  the  tone  she  took  with  the  wretch 
ed  queen.  Hamlet  appeared  to  scold  her  mother, 
but  though  it  could  be  said  that  her  mother  deserved 
a  scolding,  was  it  the  part  of  a  good  daughter  to  give 
it  her? 

One  should,  of  course,  say  a  good  son,  but  long  be 
fore  this  it  had  become  impossible  to  think  at  all  of 
Mme.  Bernhardt's  Hamlet  as  a  man,  if  it  ever  had  been 
possible.  She  had  traversed  the  bounds  which  tra 
dition  as  well  as  nature  has  set,  and  violated  the  only 
condition  upon  which  an  actress  may  personate  a 
man.  This  condition  is  that  there  shall  be  always  a 
hint  of  comedy  in  the  part,  that  the  spectator  shall 
know  all  the  time  that  the  actress  is  a  woman,  and 
that  she  shall  confess  herself  such  before  the  play  is 
over;  she  shall  be  fascinating  in  the  guise  of  a  man 
only  because  she  is  so  much  more  intensely  a  woman  in 
in  it.  Shakespeare  had  rather  a  fancy  for  women  in 
men's  roles,  which,  as  women's  r61es  in  his  time  were 
always  taken  by  pretty  and  clever  boys,  could  be  more 
naturally  managed  then  than  now.  But  when  it  came 
to  the  eclaircissement,  and  the  pretty  boys,  who  had 
been  playing  the  parts  of  women  disguised  as  men, 
had  to  own  themselves  women,  the  effect  must  have 
been  confused  if  not  weakened.  If  Mme.  Bernhardt, 
in  the  necessity  of  doing  something  Shakespearean, 
had  chosen  to  do  Rosalind,  or  Viola,  or  Portia,  she 
could  have  done  it  with  all  the  modern  advantages 
of  women  in  men's  roles.  These  characters  are,  of 

137 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

course, "  lighter  motions  bounded  in  a  shallower  brain  " 
than  the  creation  she  aimed  at;  but  she  could  at  least 
have  made  much  of  them,  and  she  does  not  make  much 
of  Hamlet. 

Ill 

The  strongest  reason  against  any  woman  Hamlet 
is  that  it  does  violence  to  an  ideal.  Literature  is  not 
so  rich  in  great  imaginary  masculine  types  that  we 
can  afford  to  have  them  transformed  to  women;  and 
after  seeing  Mme.  Bernhardt's  Hamlet  no  one  can 
altogether  liberate  himself  from  the  fancy  that  the 
Prince  of  Denmark  was  a  girl  of  uncertain  age,  with 
crises  of  mannishness  in  which  she  did  not  seem  quite 
a  lady.  Hamlet  is  in  nothing  more  a  man  than  in 
the  things  to  which  as  a  man  he  found  himself  un 
equal  ;  for  as  a  woman  he  would  have  been  easily  su 
perior  to  them.  If  we  could  suppose  him  a  woman 
as  Mme.  Bernhardt,  in  spite  of  herself,  invites  us  to 
do,  we  could  only  suppose  him  to  have  solved  his  per 
plexities  with  the  delightful  precipitation  of  his  puta 
tive  sex.  As  the  niece  of  a  wicked  uncle,  who  in  that 
case  would  have  had  to  be  a  wicked  aunt,  wedded  to 
Hamlet's  father  hard  upon  the  murder  of  her  mother, 
she  would  have  made  short  work  of  her  vengeance. 
No  fine  scruples  would  have  delayed  her;  she  would 
not  have  had  a  moment's  question  whether  she  had 
not  better  kill  herself;  she  would  have  out  with  her 
bare  bodkin  and  ended  the  doubt  by  first  passing  it 
through  her  aunt's  breast. 

To  be  sure,  there  would  then  have  been  no  play  of 
"  Hamlet/'  as  we  have  it;  but  a  Hamlet  like  that  imag 
ined,  a  frankly  feminine  Hamlet,  Mme.  Bernhardt  could 
have  rendered  wonderfully.  It  is  in  attempting  a  mas 
culine  Hamlet  that  she  transcends  the  imaginable  and. 

138 


A    SHE    HAMLET 

violates  an  ideal.  It  is  not  thinkable.  After  you  have 
seen  it  done,  you  say,  as  Mr.  Clemens  is  said  to  have 
said  of  bicycling :  "  Yes,  I  have  seen  it,  but  it's  impos 
sible.  It  doesn't  stand  to  reason/' 

Art,  like  law,  is  the  perfection  of  reason,  and  what 
ever  is  unreasonable  in  the  work  of  an  artist  is  inar 
tistic.  By  the  time  I  had  reached  these  bold  conclu 
sions  I  was  ready  to  deduce  a  principle  from  them, 
and  to  declare  that  in  a  true  civilization  such  a  thing 
as  that  Hamlet  would  be  forbidden,  as  an  offence  against 
public  morals,  a  violence  to  something  precious  and 
sacred. 

In  the  absence  of  any  public  regulation  the  precious 
and  sacred  ideals  in  the  arts  must  be  trusted  to  the 
several  artists,  who  bring  themselves  to  judgment  when 
they  violate  them.  After  Mme.  Bernhardt  was  per 
versely  willing  to  attempt  the  part  of  Hamlet,  the  ques 
tion  whether  she  did  it  well  or  not  was  of  slight  conse 
quence.  She  had  already  made  her  failure  in  wishing 
to  play  the  part.  Her  wish  impugned  her  greatness 
as  an  artist;  of  a  really  great  actress  it  would  have 
been  as  unimaginable  as  the  assumption  of  a  sublime 
feminine  r61e  by  a  really  great  actor.  There  is  an  ob 
scure  law  in  this  matter  which  it  would  be  interesting 
to  trace,  but  for  the  present  I  must  leave  the  inquiry 
with  the  reader.  I  can  note  merely  that  it  seems  some 
how  more  permissible  for  women  in  imaginary  actions 
to  figure  as  men  than  for  men  to  figure  as  women.  In 
the  theatre  we  have  conjectured  how  and  why  this 
may  be,  but  the  privilege,  for  less  obvious  reasons, 
seems  yet  more  liberally  granted  in  fiction.  A  woman 
may  tell  a  story  in  the  character  of  a  man  and  not  give 
offence,  but  a  man  cannot  write  a  novel  in  autobio 
graphical  form  from  the  personality  of  a  woman  with 
out  imparting  the  sense  of  something  unwholesome. 
One  feels  this  true  even  in  the  work  of  such  a  master 

139 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

as  Tolstoy,  whose  Katia  is  a  case  in  point.  Perhaps  a 
woman  may  play  Hamlet  with  a  less  shocking  effect 
than  a  man  may  play  Desdemona,  but  all  the  same 
she  must  not  play  Hamlet  at  all.  That  sublime  ideal 
is  the  property  of  the  human  imagination,  and  may 
not  be  profaned  by  a  talent  enamoured  of  the  impossi 
ble.  No  harm  could  be  done  by  the  broadest  bur 
lesque,  the  most  irreverent  travesty,  for  these  would 
still  leave  the  ideal  untouched.  Hamlet,  after  all  the 
horse-play,  would  be  Hamlet;  but  Hamlet  played  by 
a  woman,  to  satisfy  her  caprice,  or  to  feed  her  famine 
for  a  fresh  effect,  is  Hamlet  disabled,  for  a  long  time, 
at  least,  in  its  vital  essence.  I  felt  that  it  would  take 
many  returns  to  the  Hamlet  of  Shakespeare  to  efface 
the  impression  of  Mme.  Bernhardt's  Hamlet;  and  as 
I  prepared  to  escape  from  my  row  of  stalls  in  the  dark 
ening  theatre,  I  experienced  a  noble  shame  for  having 
seen  the  Dane  so  disnatured,  to  use  Mr.  Lowell's  word. 
I  had  not  been  obliged  to  come ;  I  had  voluntarily  shared 
in  the  wrong  done ;  by  my  presence  I  had  made  myself 
an  accomplice  in  the  wrong.  It  was  high  ground, 
but  not  too  high  for  me,  and  I  recovered  a  measure  of 
self-respect  in  assuming  it. 


SPANISH  PRISONERS  OF  WAR 


summers  ago  our  cruisers,  the  St. 
Louis  and  the  Harvard,  arrived  at  Portsmouth, 
New  Hampshire,  with  sixteen  or  seventeen  hundred 
Spanish  prisoners  from  Santiago  de  Cuba.  They 
were  partly  soldiers  of  the  land  forces  picked  up  by 
our  troops  in  the  fights  before  the  city,  but  by  far  the 
greater  part  were  sailors  and  marines  from  Cervera's 
ill-fated  fleet.  I  have  not  much  stomach  for  war,  but 
the  poetry  of  the  fact  I  have  stated  made  a  very  potent 
appeal  to  me  on  my  literary  side,  and  I  did  not  hold 
out  against  it  longer  than  to  let  the  St.  Louis  get  away 
with  Cervera  to  Annapolis,  when  only  her  less  digni 
fied  captives  remained  with  those  of  the  Harvard  to 
feed  either  the  vainglory  or  the  pensive  curiosity  of  the 
spectator.  Then  I  went  over  from  our  summer  colony 
to  Kittery  Point,  and  got  a  boat,  and  sailed  out  to  have 
a  look  at  these  subordinate  enemies  in  the  first  hours 
of  their  imprisonment. 


It  was  an  afternoon  of  the  brilliancy  known  only  to 
an  afternoon  of  the  American  summer,  and  the  water 
of  the  swift  Piscataqua  River  glittered  in  the  sun  with 
a  really  incomparable  brilliancy.  But  nothing  could 
light  up  the  great  monster  of  a  ship,  painted  the  dis 
mal  lead-color  which  our  White  Squadrons  put  on  with 
the  outbreak  of  the  war,  and  she  lay  sullen  in  the  stream 

141 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

with  a  look  of  ponderous  repose,  to  which  the  activities 
of  the  coaling-barges  at  her  side,  and  of  the  sailors  wash 
ing  her  decks,  seemed  quite  unrelated.  A  long  gun  for 
ward  and  a  long  gun  aft  threatened  the  fleet  of  launches, 
tugs,  dories,  and  cat-boats  which  fluttered  about  her, 
but  the  Harvard  looked  tired  and  bored,  and  seemed 
as  if  asleep.  She  had,  in  fact,  finished  her  mission. 
The  captives  whom  death  had  released  had  been  car 
ried  out  and  sunk  in  the  sea ;  those  who  survived  to  a 
further  imprisonment  had  all  been  taken  to  the  pretty 
island  a  mile  farther  up  in  the  river,  where  the  tide 
rushes  back  and  forth  through  the  Narrows  like  a  tor 
rent.  Its  defiant  rapidity  has  won  it  there  the  graphic 
name  of  Pull-and-be- Damned ;  and  we  could  only  hope 
to  reach  the  island  by  a  series  of  skilful  tacks,  which 
should  humor  both  the  wind  and  the  tide,  both  dead 
against  us.  Our  boatman,  one  of  those  shore  New- 
Englanders  who  are  born  with  a  knowledge  of  sail 
ing,  was  easily  master  of  the  art  of  this,  but  it  took 
time,  and  gave  me  more  than  the  leisure  I  wanted  for 
trying  to  see  the  shore  with  the  strange  eyes  of  the 
captives  who  had  just  looked  upon  it.  It  was  beau 
tiful,  I  had  to  own,  even  in  my  quality  of  exile  and 
prisoner.  The  meadows  and  the  orchards  came  down 
to  the  water,  or,  where  the  wandering  line  of  the  land 
was  broken  and  lifted  in  black  fronts  of  rock,  they  crept 
to  the  edge  of  the  cliff  and  peered  over  it.  A  sum 
mer  hotel  stretched  its  verandas  along  a  lovely  level ; 
everywhere  in  clovery  hollows  and  on  breezy  knolls 
were  gray  old  farm-houses  and  summer  cottages — like 
weather-beaten  birds'  nests,  and  like  freshly  painted 
marten-boxes;  but  all  of  a  cold  New  England  neat 
ness  which  made  me  homesick  for  my  malodorous 
Spanish  fishing  -  village,  shambling  down  in  stony 
lanes  to  the  warm  tides  of  my  native  seas.  Here, 
every  place  looked  as  if  it  had  been  newly  scrubbed 

142 


SPANISH  PRISONERS   OF   WAR 

with  soap  and  water,  and  rubbed  down  with  a  coarse 
towel,  and  was  of  an  antipathetic  alertness.  The 
sweet,  keen  breeze  made  me  shiver,  and  the  northern 
sky,  from  which  my  blinding  southern  sun  was  blaz 
ing,  was  as  hard  as  sapphire. 

I  tried  to  bewilder  myself  in  the  ignorance  of  a  Cata- 
lonian  or  Asturian  fisherman,  and  to  wonder  with  his 
darkened  mind  why  it  should  all  or  any  of  it  have  been, 
and  why  I  should  have  escaped  from  the  iron  hell  in 
which  I  had  fought  no  quarrel  of  my  own  to  fall  into 
the  hands  of  strangers,  and  to  be  haled  over  seas  to 
these  alien  shores  for  a  captivity  of  unknown  term. 
But  I  need  not  have  been  at  so  much  pains ;  the  intelli 
gence  (I  do  not  wish  to  boast)  of  an  American  author 
would  have  sufficed;  for  if  there  is  anything  more 
grotesque  than  another  in  war  it  is  its  monstrous  in 
consequence.  If  we  had  a  grief  with  the  Spanish 
government,  and  if  it  was  so  mortal  we  must  do  mur 
der  for  it,  we  might  have  sent  a  joint  committee  of  the 
House  and  Senate,  and,  with  the  improved  means  of 
assassination  which  modern  science  has  put  at  our 
command,  killed  off  the  Spanish  cabinet,  and  even 
the  queen -mother  and  the  little  king.  This  would 
have  been  consequent,  logical,  and  in  a  sort  reason 
able;  but  to  butcher  and  capture  a  lot  of  wretched 
Spanish  peasants  and  fishermen,  hapless  conscripts 
to  whom  personally  and  nationally  we  were  as  so  many 
men  in  the  moon,  was  that  melancholy  and  humiliating 
necessity  of  war  which  makes  it  homicide  in  which  there 
is  not  even  the  saving  grace  of  hate,  or  the  excuse  of 
hot  blood. 

I  was  able  to  console  myself  perhaps  a  little  better 
for  the  captivity  of  the  Spaniards  than  if  I  had  really 
been  one  of  them,  as  we  drew  nearer  and  nearer  their 
prison  isle,  and  it  opened  its  knotty  points  and  little 
ravines,  overrun  with  sweet -fern,  blueberry -bushes, 

143 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

bay,  and  low  blackberry-vines,  and  rigidly  traversed 
with  a  high  stockade  of  yellow  pine  boards.  Six  or 
eight  long,  low,  wooden  barracks  stretched  side  by  side 
across  the  general  slope,  with  the  captive  officers' 
quarters,  sheathed  in  weather-proof  black  paper,  at 
one  end  of  them.  About  their  doors  swarmed  the 
common  prisoners,  spilling  out  over  the  steps  and  on 
the  grass,  where  some  of  them  lounged  smoking.  One 
operatic  figure  in  a  long  blanket  stalked  athwart  an 
open  space;  but  there  was  such  poverty  of  drama  in 
the  spectacle  at  the  distance  we  wrere  keeping  that  we 
were  glad  of  so  much  as  a  shirt-sleeved  contractor 
driving  out  of  the  stockade  in  his  buggy.  On  the 
heights  overlooking  the  enclosure  Gatling  guns  were 
posted  at  three  or  four  points,  and  every  thirty  or  forty 
feet  sentries  met  and  parted,  so  indifferent  to  us,  ap 
parently,  that  we  wondered  if  we  might  get  nearer. 
We  ventured,  but  at  a  certain  moment  a  sentry  called 
to  us,  "Fifty  yards  off,  please!"  Our  young  skipper 
answered,  "All  right/'  and  as  the  sentry  had  a  gun 
on  his  shoulder  which  we  had  every  reason  to  believe 
was  loaded,  it  was  easily  our  pleasure  to  retreat  to  the 
specified  limit.  In  fact,  we  came  away  altogether, 
after  that,  so  little  promise  was  there  of  our  being  able 
to  satisfy  our  curiosity  further.  We  came  away  care 
fully  nursing  such  impression  as  we  had  got  of  a  spec 
tacle  whose  historical  quality  we  did  our  poor  best  to 
feel.  It  related  us,  after  solicitation,  to  the  wars  against 
the  Moors,  against  the  Mexicans  and  Peruvians,  against 
the  Dutch;  to  the  Italian  campaigns  of  the  Gran  Cap- 
itan,  to  the  Siege  of  Florence,  to  the  Sack  of  Rome, 
to  the  wars  of  the  Spanish  Succession,  and  I  do  not 
know  what  others.  I  do  not  deny  that  there  was  a 
certain  aesthetic  joy  in  having  the  Spanish  prisoners 
there  for  this  effect;  we  came  away  duly  grateful  for 
what  we  had  seen  of  them;  and  we  had  long  duly  re- 

144 


SPANISH   PRISONERS  OF  WAR 

signed  ourselves  to  seeing  no  more,  when  word  was 
sent  to  us  that  our  young  skipper  had  got  a  permit  to 
visit  the  island,  and  wished  us  to  go  with  him. 


II 

It  was  just  such  another  afternoon  when  we  went 
again,  but  this  time  we  took  the  joyous  trolley-car, 
and  bounded  and  pirouetted  along  as  far  as  the  navy- 
yard  of  Kittery,  and  there  we  dismounted  and  walked 
among  the  vast,  ghostly  ship-sheds,  so  long  empty 
of  ships.  The  grass  grew  in  the  Kittery  navy-yard, 
but  it  was  all  the  pleasanter  for  the  grass,  and  those 
pale,  silent  sheds  were  far  more  impressive  in  their  si 
lence  than  they  would  have  been  if  resonant  with  saw 
and  hammer.  At  several  points,  an  unarmed  marine 
left  his  leisure  somewhere,  and  lunged  across  our  path 
with  a  mute  appeal  for  our  permit;  but  we  were  no 
where  delayed  till  we  came  to  the  office  where  it  had 
to  be  countersigned,  and  after  that  we  had  presently 
crossed  a  bridge,  by  shady,  rustic  ways,  and  were 
on  the  prison  island.  Here,  if  possible,  the  sense  of 
something  pastoral  deepened;  a  man  driving  a  file  of 
cows  passed  before  us  under  kindly  trees,  and  the 
bell  which  the  foremost  of  these  milky  mothers  wore 
about  her  silken  throat  sent  forth  its  clear,  tender  note 
as  if  from  the  depth  of  some  grassy  bosk,  and  instant 
ly  witched  me  away  to  the  woods-pastures  which  my 
boyhood  knew  in  southern  Ohio.  Even  when  we  got  to 
what  seemed  fortifications  they  turned  out  to  be  the 
walls  of  an  old  reservoir,  and  bore  on  their  gate  a  pater 
nal  warning  that  children  unaccompanied  by  adults 
were  not  allowed  within. 

We  mounted  some  stone  steps  over  this  portal  and 
were  met  by  a  young  marine,  who  left  his  Gatling  gun 

145 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

for  a  moment  to  ask  for  our  permit,  and  then  went  back 
satisfied.  Then  we  found  ourselves  in  the  presence 
of  a  sentry  with  a  rifle  on  his  shoulder,  who  was  rather 
more  exacting.  Still,  he  only  wished  to  be  convinced, 
and  when  he  had  pointed  out  the  headquarters  where  we 
were  next  to  go,  he  let  us  over  his  beat.  At  the  head 
quarters  there  was  another  sentry,  equally  serious, 
but  equally  civil,  and  with  the  intervention  of  an  or 
derly  our  leader  saw  the  officer  of  the  day.  He  came 
out  of  the  quarters  looking  rather  blank,  for  he  had 
learned  that  his  pass  admitted  our  party  to  the  lines, 
but  not  to  the  stockade,  which  we  might  approach, 
at  a  certain  point  of  vantage  and  look  over  into,  but 
not  penetrate.  We  resigned  ourselves,  as  we  must, 
and  made  what  we  could  of  the  nearest  prison  barrack, 
whose  door  overflowed  and  whose  windows  swarmed 
with  swarthy  captives.  Here  they  were,  at  such  close 
quarters  that  their  black,  eager  eyes  easily  pierced  the 
pockets  full  of  cigarettes  which  we  had  brought  for 
them.  They  looked  mostly  very  young,  and  there 
was  one  smiling  rogue  at  the  first  window  who  was 
obviously  prepared  to  catch  anything  thrown  to  him. 
He  caught,  in  fact,  the  first  box  of  cigarettes  shied 
over  the  stockade ;  the  next  box  flew  open,  and  spilled 
its  precious  contents  outside  the  dead-line  under  the 
window,  where  I  hope  some  compassionate  guard 
gathered  them  up  and  gave  them  to  the  captives. 

Our  fellows  looked  capable  of  any  kindness  to  their 
wards  short  of  letting  them  go.  They  were  a  most 
friendly  company,  with  an  effect  of  picnicking  there 
among  the  sweet-fern  and  blueberries,  where  they  had 
pitched  their  wooden  tents  with  as  little  disturbance 
to  the  shrubbery  as  possible.  They  were  very  polite 
to  us,  and  when,  after  that  misadventure  with  the 
cigarettes  (I  had  put  our  young  leader  up  to  throwing 
the  box,  merely  supplying  the  corpus  delicti  myself), 

146 


SPANISH   PRISONERS   OF  WAR 

I  wandered  vaguely  towards  a  Galling  gun  planted 
on  an  earthen  platform  where  the  laurel  and  the  dog- 
roses  had  been  cut  away  for  it,  the  man  in  charge  ex 
plained  with  a  smile  of  apology  that  I  must  not  pass 
a  certain  path  I  had  already  crossed. 

One  always  accepts  the  apologies  of  a  man  with  a 
Catling  gun  to  back  them,  and  I  retreated.  That 
seemed  the  end ;  and  we  were  going  crestfallenly  away 
when  the  officer  of  the  day  came  out  and  allowed  us  to 
make  his  acquaintance.  He  permitted  us,  with  laugh 
ing  reluctance,  to  learn  that  he  had  been  in  the  fight 
at  Santiago,  and  had  come  with  the  prisoners,  and  he 
was  most  obligingly  sorry  that  our  permit  did  not 
let  us  into  the  stockade.  I  said  I  had  some  cigarettes 
for  the  prisoners,  and  I  supposed  I  might  send  them 
in,  but  he  said  he  could  not  allow  this,  for  they  had 
money  to  buy  tobacco;  and  he  answered  another  of 
our  party,  who  had  not  a  soul  above  buttons,  and  who 
asked  if  she  could  get  one  from  the  Spaniards,  that 
so  far  from  promoting  her  wish,  he  would  have  been 
obliged  to  take  away  any  buttons  she  might  have  got 
from  them. 

"The  fact  is,"  he  explained,  "you've  come  to  the 
wrong  end  for  transactions  in  buttons  and  tobacco." 

Rut  perhaps  innocence  so  great  as  ours  had  wrought 
upon  him.  When  we  said  we  were  going,  and  thanked 
him  for  his  unavailing  good-will,  he  looked  at  his 
watch  and  said  they  were  just  going  to  feed  the  pris 
oners;  and  after  some  parley  he  suddenly  called  out, 
"Music  of  the  guard!"  Instead  of  a  regimental  band, 
which  I  had  supposed  summoned,  a  single  corporal 
ran  out  the  barracks,  touching  his  cap. 

"Take  this  party  round  to  the  gate,"  the  officer  said, 
and  he  promised  us  that  he  would  see  us  there,  and 
hoped  we  would  not  mind  a  rough  walk.  We  could 
have  answered  that  to  see  his  prisoners  fed  we  would 

147 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

wade  through  fathoms  of  red-tape ;  but  in  fact  we  were 
arrested  at  the  last  point  by  nothing  worse  than  the 
barbed  wire  which  fortified  the  outer  gate.  Here  two 
marines  were  willing  to  tell  us  how  well  the  prisoners 
lived,  while  we  stared  into  the  stockade  through  an 
inner  gate  of  plank  which  was  run  back  for  us.  They 
said  the  Spaniards  had  a  breakfast  of  coffee,  and  hash 
or  stew  and  potatoes,  and  a  dinner  of  soup  and  roast ; 
and  now  at  five  o'clock  they  were  to  have  bread  and 
coffee,  which  indeed  we  saw  the  white-capped,  white- 
jacketed  cooks  bringing  out  in  huge  tin  wash-boilers. 
Our  marines  were  of  opinion,  and  no  doubt  rightly, 
that  these  poor  Spaniards  had  never  known  in  their 
lives  before  what  it  was  to  have  full  stomachs.  But 
the  marines  said  they  never  acknowledged  it,  and  the 
one  who  had  a  German  accent  intimated  that  grati 
tude  was  not  a  virtue  of  any  Roman  (I  suppose  he  meant 
Latin)  people.  But  I  do  not  know  that  if  I  were  a  pris 
oner,  for  no  fault  of  my  own,  I  should  be  very  explicit 
ly  thankful  for  being  unusualty  well  fed.  I  thought 
(or  I  think  now)  that  a  fig  or  a  bunch  of  grapes  would 
have  been  more  acceptable  to  me  under  my  own  vine 
and  fig-tree  than  the  stew  and  roast  of  captors  who 
were  indeed  showing  themselves  less  my  enemies  than 
my  own  government,  but  were  still  not  quite  my  hosts. 


Ill 

How  is  it  the  great  pieces  of  good  luck  fall  to  us? 
The  clock  strikes  twelve  as  it  strikes  two,  and  with  no 
more  premonition.  As  we  stood  there  expecting  noth 
ing  better  of  it  than  three  at  the  most,  it  suddenly  struck 
twelve.  Our  officer  appeared  at  the  inner  gate  and 
bade  our  marines  slide  away  the  gate  of  barbed  wire 
and  let  us  into  the  enclosure,  where  he  welcomed  us  to 

148 


SPANISH    PRISONERS   OF  WAR 

seats  on  the  grass  against  the  stockade,  with  many 
polite  regrets  that  the  tough  little  knots  of  earth  beside 
it  were  not  chairs. 

The  prisoners  were  already  filing  out  of  their  quar 
ters,  at  a  rapid  trot  towards  the  benches  where  those 
great  wash-boilers  of  coffee  were  set.  Each  man  had 
a  soup-plate  and  bowl  of  enamelled  tin,  and  each  in 
his  turn  received  quarter  of  a  loaf  of  fresh  bread  and  a 
big  ladlef ul  of  steaming  coffee,  which  he  made  off  with 
to  his  place  at  one  of  the  long  tables  under  a  shed  at 
the  side  of  the  stockade.  One  young  fellow  tried  to 
get  a  place  not  his  own  in  the  shade,  and  our  officer 
when  he  came  back  explained  that  he  was  a  guerril- 
lero,  and  rather  unruly.  We  heard  that  eight  of  the 
prisoners  were  in  irons,  by  sentence  of  their  own  officers, 
for  misconduct,  but  all  save  this  guerrillero  here  were 
docile  and  obedient  enough,  and  seemed  only  too  glad 
to  get  peacefully  at  their  bread  and  coffee. 

First  among  them  came  the  men  of  the  Cristdbal 
Colon,  and  these  were  the  best  looking  of  all  the  cap 
tives.  From  their  pretty  fair  average  the  others  varied 
to  worse  and  worse,  till  a  very  scrub  lot,  said  to  be  ex- 
convicts,  brought  up  the  rear.  They  were  nearly  all 
little  fellows,  and  very  dark,  though  here  and  there  a 
six-footer  towered  up,  or  a  blond  showed  among  them. 
They  were  joking  and  laughing  together,  harmlessly 
enough,  but  I  must  own  that  they  looked  a  crew  of 
rather  sorry  jail-birds;  though  whether  any  run  of 
humanity  clad  in  misfits  of  our  navy  blue  and  white, 
and  other  chance  garments,  with  close-shaven  heads, 
and  sometimes  bare  feet,  would  have  looked  much  less 
like  jail-birds  I  am  not  sure.  Still,  they  were  not  pre 
possessing,  and  though  some  of  them  were  pathetically 
young,  they  had  none  of  the  charm  of  boyhood.  No 
doubt  they  did  not  do  themselves  justice,  and  to  be  herd 
ed  there  like  cattle  did  not  improve  their  chances  of 

149 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

making  a  favorable  impression  on  the  observer.  They 
were  kindly  used  by  our  officer  and  his  subordinates, 
who  mixed  among  them,  and  straightened  out  the  con 
fusion  they  got  into  at  times,  and  perhaps  sometimes 
wilfully.  Their  guards  employed  a  few  handy  words 
of  Spanish  with  them ;  where  these  did  not  avail,  they 
took  them  by  the  arm  and  directed  them ;  but  I  did  not 
hear  a  harsh  tone,  and  I  saw  no  violence,  or  even  so 
much  indignity  offered  them  as  the  ordinary  trolley- 
car  passenger  is  subjected  to  in  Broadway.  At  a  cer 
tain  bugle-call  they  dispersed,  when  they  had  finished 
their  bread  and  coffee,  and  scattered  about  over  the 
grass,  or  returned  to  their  barracks.  We  were  told 
that  these  children  of  the  sun  dreaded  its  heat,  and 
kept  out  of  it  whenever  they  could,  even  in  its  decline ; 
but  they  seemed  not  so  much  to  withdraw  and  hide 
themselves  from  that,  as  to  vanish  into  the  history  of 
"  old,  unhappy,  far-off "  times,  where  prisoners  of  war 
properly  belong.  I  roused  myself  with  a  start  as  if  I 
had  lost  them  in  the  past. 

Our  officer  came  towards  us  and  said  gayly,  "  Well, 
you  have  seen  the  animals  fed,"  and  let  us  take  our 
grateful  leave.  I  think  we  were  rather  a  loss,  in  our 
going,  to  the  marines,  who  seemed  glad  of  a  chance  to 
talk.  I  am  sure  we  were  a  loss  to  the  man  on  guard 
at  the  inner  gate,  who  walked  his  beat  with  reluc 
tance  when  it  took  him  from  us,  and  eagerly  when  it 
brought  him  back.  Then  he  delayed  for  a  rapid  and 
comprehensive  exchange  of  opinions  and  ideas,  suc 
cessfully  blending  military  subordination  with  Amer 
ican  equality  in  his  manner. 

The  whole  thing  was  very  American  in  the  perfect 
decorum  and  the  utter  absence  of  ceremony.  Those 
good  fellows  were  in  the  clothes  they  wore  through 
the  fights  at  Santiago,  and  they  could  not  have  put 
on  much  splendor  if  they  had  wished,  but  apparently 

150 


SPANISH   PRISONERS   OF  WAR 

they  did  not  wish.  They  were  simple,  straightfor 
ward,  and  adequate.  There  was  some  dry  joking 
about  the  superiority  of  the  prisoners'  rations  and 
lodgings,  and  our  officer  ironically  professed  his  in 
tention  of  messing  with  the  Spanish  officers.  But 
there  was  no  grudge,  and  not  a  shadow  of  ill  will,  or 
of  that  stupid  and  atrocious  hate  towards  the  public 
enemy  which  abominable  newspapers  and  politicians 
had  tried  to  breed  in  the  popular  mind.  There  was- 
nothing  manifest  but  a  sort  of  cheerful  purpose  to  live 
up  to  that  military  ideal  of  duty  which  is  so  much; 
nobler  than  the  civil  ideal  of  self-interest.  Perhaps 
duty  will  yet  become  the  civil  ideal,  when  the  peoples 
shall  have  learned  to  live  for  the  common  good,  and 
are  united  for  the  operation  of  the  industries  as  they 
now  are  for  the  hostilities. 


Shall  I  say  that  a  sense  of  something  domestic, 
something  homelike,  imparted  itself  from  what  I  had 
seen?  Or  was  this  more  properly  an  effect  from  our 
visit,  on  the  way  back  to  the  hospital,  where  a  hun 
dred  and  fifty  of  the  prisoners  lay  sick  of  wounds  and 
fevers?  I  cannot  say  that  a  humaner  spirit  prevailed 
here  than  in  the  camp;  it  was  only  a  more  positive 
humanity  which  was  at  work.  Most  of  the  sufferers 
were  stretched  on  the  clean  cots  of  two  long,  airy,  wooden 
shells,  which  received  them,  four  days  after  the  orders 
for  their  reception  had  come,  with  every  equipment 
for  their  comfort.  At  five  o'clock,  when  we  passed 
down  the  aisles  between  their  beds,  many  of  them  had 
a  gay,  nonchalant  effect  of  having  toothpicks  or  cigar 
ettes  in  their  mouths;  but  it  was  really  the  thermom 
eters  with  which  the  nurses  were  taking  their  tem- 

151 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

perature.  It  suggested  a  possibility  to  me,  however, 
and  I  asked  if  they  were  allowed  to  smoke,  and  being 
answered  that  they  did  smoke,  anyway,  whenever 
they  could,  I  got  rid  at  last  of  those  boxes  of  cigarettes 
which  had  been  burning  my  pockets,  as  it  were,  all 
afternoon.  I  gave  them  to  such  as  I  was  told  were  the 
most  deserving  among  the  sick  captives,  but  Heaven 
knows  I  would  as  willingly  have  given  them  to  the 
least.  They  took  my  largesse  gravely,  as  became 
Spaniards;  one  said,  smiling  sadly,  "  Muchas  gracias," 
but  the  others  merely  smiled  sadly;  and  I  looked  in 
vain  for  the  response  which  would  have  twinkled  up 
in  the  faces  of  even  moribund  Italians  at  our  looks 
of  pity.  Italians  would  have  met  our  sympathy  half 
way;  but  these  poor  fellows  were  of  another  tradition, 
and  in  fact  not  all  the  Latin  peoples  are  the  same, 
though  we  sometimes  conveniently  group  them  to 
gether  for  our  detestation.  Perhaps  there  are  even 
personal  distinctions  among  their  several  nationali 
ties,  and  there  are  some  Spaniards  who  are  as  true 
and  kind  as  some  Americans.  When  we  remember 
Cortez  let  us  not  forget  Las  Casas. 

They  lay  in  their  beds  there,  these  little  Spanish 
men,  whose  dark  faces  their  sickness  could  not  blanch 
to  more  than  a  sickly  sallow,  and  as  they  turned  their 
dull  black  eyes  upon  us  I  must  own  that  I  could  not 
"support  the  government"  so  fiercely  as  I  might  have 
done  elsewhere.  But  the  truth  is,  I  was  demoralized 
by  the  looks  of  these  poor  little  men,  who,  in  spite  of 
their  character  of  public  enemies,  did  look  so  much 
like  somebody's  brothers,  and  even  somebody's  chil 
dren.  I  may  have  been  infected  by  the  air  of  com 
passion,  of  scientific  compassion,  which  prevailed  in 
the  place.  There  it  was  as  wholly  business  to  be  kind 
and  to  cure  as  in  another  branch  of  the  service  it  was 
business  to  be  cruel  and  to  kill.  How  droll  these  things 

152 


SPANISH    PRISONERS   OF   WAR 

are!  The  surgeons  had  their  favorites  among  the 
patients,  to  all  of  whom  they  were  equally  devoted; 
inarticulate  friendships  had  sprung  up  between  them 
and  certain  of  their  hapless  foes,  whom  they  spoke  of 
as  "a  sort  of  pets/'  One  of  these  was  very  useful  in 
making  the  mutinous  take  their  medicine;  another 
was  liked  apparently  because  he  was  so  likable.  At 
a  certain  cot  the  chief  surgeon  stopped  and  said,  "  We 
did  not  expect  this  boy  to  live  through  the  night/' 
He  took  the  boy's  wrist  between  his  thumb  and  finger, 
and  asked  tenderly  as  he  leaned  over  him,  "  Poco 
mejor?"  The  boy  could  not  speak  to  say  that  he 
was  a  little  better ;  he  tried  to  smile  —  such  things 
do  move  the  witness;  nor  does  the  sight  of  a  man 
whose  bandaged  cheek  has  been  half  chopped  away 
by  a  machete  tend  to  restore  one's  composure. 


f 


THE    MIDNIGHT   PLATOON 

HE  had  often  heard  of  it.  Connoisseurs  of  such 
matters,  young  newspaper  men  trying  to  make 
literature  out  of  life  and  smuggle  it  into  print  under 
the  guard  of  unwary  editors,  and  young  authors  eager 
to  get  life  into  their  literature,  had  recommended  it  to 
him  as  one  of  the  most  impressive  sights  of  the  city; 
and  he  had  willingly  agreed  with  them  that  he  ought 
to  see  it.  He  imagined  it  very  dramatic,  and  he  was 
surprised  to  find  it  in  his  experience  so  largely  sub 
jective.  If  there  was  any  drama  at  all  it  was  wholly 
in  his  own  consciousness.  But  the  thing  was  certain 
ly  impressive  in  its  way. 


He  thought  it  a  great  piece  of  luck  that  he  should 
come  upon  it  by  chance,  and  so  long  after  he  had  for 
gotten  about  it  that  he  was  surprised  to  recognize  it 
for  the  spectacle  he  had  often  promised  himself  the 
pleasure  of  seeing. 

Pleasure  is  the  right  word;  for  pleasure  of  the  pain 
ful  sort  that  all  hedonists  will  easily  imagine  was 
what  he  expected  to  get  from  it ;  though  upon  the  face 
of  it  there  seems  no  reason  why  a  man  should  delight 
to  see  his  fellow-men  waiting  in  the  winter  street  for 
the  midnight  dole  of  bread  which  must  in  some  cases 
be  their  only  meal  from  the  last  midnight  to  the  next 

154 


THE   MIDNIGHT   PLATOON 

midnight.  But  the  mere  thought  of  it  gave  him  pleas 
ure,  and  the  sight  of  it,  from  the  very  first  instant. 
He  was  proud  of  knowing  just  what  it  was  at  once, 
with  the  sort  of  pride  which  one  has  in  knowing  an 
earthquake,  though  one  has  never  felt  one  before. 
He  saw  the  double  file  of  men  stretching  up  one  street, 
and  stretching  down  the  other  from  the  corner  of  the 
bakery  where  the  loaves  were  to  be  given  out  on  the 
stroke  of  twelve,  and  he  hugged  himself  in  a  luxurious 
content  with  his  perspicacity. 

It  was  all  the  more  comfortable  to  do  this  because 
he  was  in  a  coupe",  warmly  shut  against  the  sharp, 
wholesome  Christmas- week  weather,  and  was  wrapped 
to  the  chin  in  a  long  fur  overcoat,  which  he  wore  that 
night  as  a  duty  to  his  family,  with  a  conscience  against 
taking  cold  and  alarming  them  for  his  health.  He 
now  practised  another  piece  of  self-denial:  he  let  the 
cabman  drive  rapidly  past  the  interesting  spectacle,  and 
carry  him  to  the  house  where  he  was  going  to  fetch 
away  the  child  from  the  Christmas  party.  He  wished 
to  be  in  good  time,  so  as  to  save  the  child  from  anx 
iety  about  his  coming;  but  he  promised  himself  to 
stop,  going  back,  and  glut  his  sensibility  in  a  leisurely 
vstudy  of  the  scene.  He  got  the  child,  with  her  arms 
full  of  things  from  the  Christmas-tree,  into  the  coupe", 
and  then  he  said  to  the  cabman,  respectfully  leaning 
as  far  over  from  his  box  to  listen  as  his  thick  great 
coat  would  let  him :  "  When  you  get  up  there  near  that 
bakery  again,  drive  slowly.  I  want  to  have  a  look  at 
those  men." 

"All  right,  sir,"  said  the  driver  intelligently,  and  he 
found  his  way  skilfully  out  of  the  street  among  the 
high  banks  of  the  seasonable  Christmas- week  snow, 
which  the  street-cleaners  had  heaped  up  there  till  they 
could  get  round  to  it  with  their  carts. 

When  they  were  in  Broadway  again  it  seemed  lone- 

155 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

Her  and  silenter  than  it  was  a  few  minutes  be.ore.  Ex 
cept  for  their  own  coupe",  the  cable-cars,  with  their 
flaming  foreheads,  and  the  mechanical  clangor  of 
their  gongs  at  the  corners,  seemed  to  have  it  alto 
gether  to  themselves.  A  tall,  lumbering  United  States 
mail  van  rolled  by,  and  impressed  my  friend  in  the 
coupe"  with  a  cheap  and  agreeable  sense  of  mystery 
relative  to  the  letters  it  was  carrying  to  their  varied 
destination  at  the  Grand  Central  Station.  He  listened 
with  half  an  ear  to  the  child's  account  of  the  fun  she 
had  at  the  party,  and  he  watched  with  both  eyes  for 
the  sight  of  the  men  waiting  at  the  bakery  for  the  char 
ity  of  the  midnight  loaves. 

He  played  with  a  fear  that  they  might  all  have  van 
ished,  and  with  an  apprehension  that  the  cabman 
might  forget  and  whirl  him  rapidly  by  the  place  where 
he  had  left  them.  But  the  driver  remembered,  and 
checked  his  horses  in  good  time;  and  there  were  the 
men  still,  but  in  even  greater  number  than  before, 
stretching  farther  up  Broadway  and  farther  out  along 
the  side  street.  They  stood  slouched  in  dim  and  sol 
emn  phalanx  under  the  night  sky,  so  seasonably  clear 
and  frostily  atwinkle  with  Christmas  -  week  stars; 
two  by  two  they  stood,  slouched  close  together,  per 
haps  for  their  mutual  warmth,  perhaps  in  an  uncon 
scious  effort  to  get  near  the  door  where  the  loaves  were 
to  be  given  out,  in  time  to  share  in  them  before  they 
were  all  gone. 

II 

My  friend's  heart  beat  with  glad  anticipation.  He 
was  really  to  see  this  important,  this  representative 
thing  to  the  greatest  possible  advantage.  He  rapidly 
explained  to  his  companion  that  the  giver  of  the  mid 
night  loaves  got  rid  of  what  was  left  of  his  daily  bread 

156 


THEY    STOOD    SLOUCHED    IN    DIM    AND    SOLEMN    PHALANX    UNDER 
THE   NIGHT   SKY" 


THE   MIDNIGHT  PLATOON 

in  that  way :  the  next  day  it  could  not  be  sold,  and  he 
preferred  to  give  it  away  to  those  who  needed  it,  rather 
than  try  to  find  his  account  in  it  otherwise.  She  un 
derstood,  and  he  tried  to  think  that  sometimes  coffee 
was  given  with  the  bread,  but  he  could  not  make  sure 
of  this,  though  he  would  have  liked  very  much  to  have 
it  done ;  it  would  have  been  much  more  dramatic.  After 
wards  he  learned  that  it  was  done,  and  he  was  proud 
of  having  fancied  it. 

He  decided  that  when  he  came  alongside  of  the  Broad 
way  file  he  would  get  out,  and  go  to  the  side  door  of  the 
bakery  and  watch  the  men  receiving  the  bread.  Per 
haps  he  would  find  courage  to  speak  to  them,  and  ask 
them  about  themselves.  At  the  time  it  did  not  strike 
him  that  it  would  be  indecent. 

A  great  many  things  about  them  were  open  to  rea 
sonable  conjecture.  It  was  not  probable  that  they  were 
any  of  them  there  for  their  health,  as  the  saying  is. 
They  were  all  there  because  they  were  hungry,  or  else 
they  were  there  in  behalf  of  some  one  else  who  was 
hungry.  But  it  was  always  possible  that  some  of  them 
were  impostors,  and  he  wondered  if  any  test  was  ap 
plied  to  them  that  would  prove  them  deserving  or  un 
deserving.  If  one  were  poor,  one  ought  to  be  deserving ; 
if  one  were  rich,  it  did  not  so  much  matter. 

It  seemed  to  him  very  likely  that  if  he  asked  these 
men  questions  they  would  tell  him  lies.  A  fantastic 
association  of  their  double  files  and  those  of  the  gal 
ley-slaves  whom  Don  Quixote  released,  with  the  tonguey 
Gines  de  Passamonte  at  their  head,  came  into  his  mind. 
He  smiled,  and  then  he  thought  how  these  men  were 
really  a  sort  of  slaves  and  convicts — slaves  to  want  and 
self-convicted  of  poverty.  All  at  once  he  fancied  them 
actually  manacled  there  together,  two  by  two,  a  coffle 
of  captives  taken  in  some  cruel  foray,  and  driven  to  a 
market  where  no  man  wanted  to  buy.  He  thought 

157 


LITERATURE    AND   LIFE 

how  old  their  slavery  was ;  and  he  wondered  if  it  would 
ever  be  abolished,  as  other  slaveries  had  been.  Would 
the  world  ever  outlive  it?  Would  some  New- Year's 
day  come  when  some  President  would  proclaim,  amid 
some  dire  struggle,  that  their  slavery  was  to  be  no 
more?  That  would  be  fine. 


Ill 

He  noticed  how  still  the  most  of  them  were.  A  few 
of  them  stepped  a  little  out  of  the  line,  and  stamped  to 
shake  off  the  cold;  but  all  the  rest  remained  motion 
less,  shrinking  into  themselves,  and  closer  together. 
They  might  have  been  their  own  dismal  ghosts,  they 
were  so  still,  with  no  more  need  of  defence  from  the 
cold  than  the  dead  have. 

He  observed  now  that  not  one  among  them  had  a  fur 
overcoat  on ;  and  at  a  second  glance  he  saw  that  there 
was  not  an  overcoat  of  any  kind  among  them.  He 
made  his  reflection  that  if  any  of  them  were  impostors, 
and  not  true  men,  with  real  hunger,  and  if  they  were 
alive  to  feel  that  stiff,  wholesome,  Christmas  -  week 
cold,  they  were  justly  punished  for  their  deceit. 

He  was  interested  by  the  celerity,  the  simultaneity 
of  his  impressions,  his  reflections.  It  occurred  to  him 
that  his  abnormal  alertness  must  be  something  like 
that  of  a  drowning  person,  or  a  person  in  mortal  peril, 
and  being  perfectly  safe  and  well,  he  was  obscurely 
flattered  by  the  fact. 

To  test  his  condition  further  he  took  note  of  the  fine 
mass  of  the  great  dry-goods  store  on  the  hither  cor 
ner,  blocking  itself  out  of  the  blue-black  night,  and  of 
the  Gothic  beauty  of  the  church  beyond,  so  near  that 
the  coffle  of  captives  might  have  issued  from  its  sculpt 
ured  portal,  after  vain  prayer. 

158 


THE   MIDNIGHT   PLATOON 

Fragments  of  conjecture,  of  speculation,  drifted 
through  his  mind.  How  early  did  these  files  begin 
to  form  themselves  for  the  midnight  dole  of  bread? 
As  early  as  ten,  as  nine  o'clock?  If  so,  did  the  fact 
argue  habitual  destitution,  or  merely  habitual  leisure? 
Did  the  slaves  in  the  coffle  make  acquaintance,  or  re 
main  strangers  to  one  another,  though  they  were  close 
ly  neighbored  night  after  night  by  their  misery?  Per 
haps  they  joked  away  the  weary  hours  of  waiting; 
they  must  have  their  jokes.  Which  of  them  were  old- 
comers,  and  which  novices?  Did  they  ever  quarrel 
over  questions  of  precedence?  Had  they  some  comity, 
some  etiquette,  which  a  man  forced  to  leave  his  place 
could  appeal  to,  and  so  get  it  back  ?  Could  one  say  to 
his  next-hand  man,  "  Will  you  please  keep  my  place?" 
and  would  this  man  say  to  an  interloper,  "  Excuse  me, 
this  place  is  engaged  "  ?  How  was  it  with  them,  when 
the  coffle  worked  slowly  or  swiftly  past  the  door  where 
the  bread  and  coffee  were  given  out,  and  word  passed 
to  the  rear  that  the  supply  was  exhausted?  This 
must  sometimes  happen,  and  what  did  they  do  then? 


IV 

My  friend  did  not  quite  like  to  think.  Vague,  re 
proachful  thoughts  for  all  the  remote  and  immediate 
luxury  of  his  life  passed  through  his  mind.  If  he  re 
formed  that  and  gave  the  saving  to  hunger  and  cold? 
But  what  was  the  use?  There  was  so  much  hunger, 
so  much  cold,  that  it  could  not  go  round. 

The  cabman  was  obeying  his  orders  too  faithfully. 
He  was  not  only  walking  by  the  Broadway  coffle,  he 
was  creeping  by.  His  action  caught  the  notice  of  the 
slaves,  and  as  the  coupe  passed  them  they  all  turned 
and  faced  it,  like  soldiers  under  review  making  ready 

159 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

to  salute  a  superior.  They  were  perfectly  silent,  per 
fectly  respectful,  but  their  eyes  seemed  to  pierce  the 
coupe  through  and  through. 

My  friend  was  suddenly  aware  of  a  certain  quality 
of  representivity ;  he  stood  to  these  men  for  all  the  ease 
and  safety  that  they  could  never,  never  hope  to  know. 
He  was  Society:  Society  that  was  to  be  preserved  be 
cause  it  embodies  Civilization.  He  wondered  if  they 
hated  him  in  his  capacity  of  Better  Classes.  He  no 
longer  thought  of  getting  out  and  watching  their  be 
havior  as  they  took  their  bread  and  coffee.  He  would 
have  liked  to  excuse  that  thought,  and  protest  that  he 
was  ashamed  of  it ;  that  he  was  their  friend,  and  wished 
them  well — as  well  as  might  be  without  the  sacrifice 
of  his  own  advantages  or  superfluities,  which  he  could 
have  persuaded  them  would  be  perfectly  useless.  He 
put  his  hand  on  that  of  his  companion  trembling  on 
his  arm  with  sympathy,  or  at  least  with  intelligence. 

"  You  mustn't  mind.  What  we  are  and  what  we  do 
is  all  right.  It's  what  they  are  and  what  they  suffer 
that's  all  wrong." 


"Does  that  view  of  the  situation  still  satisfy  you?" 
I  asked,  when  he  had  told  me  of  this  singular  experi 
ence;  I  liked  his  apparently  not  coloring  it  at  all. 

"I  don't  know/'  he  answered.  "It  seems  to  be  the 
only  way  out." 

"  Well,  it's  an  easy  way,"  I  admitted,  "  and  it's  an 
idea  that  ought  to  gratify  the  midnight  platoon." 


THE  BEACH  AT  ROCKAWAY 

I  CONFESS  that  I  cannot  hear  people  rejoice  in  their 
summer  sojourn  as  beyond  the  reach  of  excur 
sionists  without  a  certain  rebellion;  and  yet  I  have 
to  confess  also  that  after  spending  a  Sunday  afternoon 
of  late  July,  four  or  five  years  ago,  with  the  excur 
sionists  at  one  of  the  beaches  near  New  York,  I  was 
rather  glad  that  my  own  summer  sojourn  was  not 
within  reach  of  them.  I  know  very  well  that  the  ex 
cursionists  must  go  somewhere,  and  as  a  man  and  a 
brother  I  am  willing  they  should  go  anywhere,  but  as 
a  friend  of  quiet  and  seclusion  I  should  be  sorry  to 
have  them  come  much  where  I  am.  It  is  not  because 
I  would  deny  them  a  share  of  any  pleasure  I  enjoy, 
but  because  they  are  so  many  and  I  am  so  few  that  I 
think  they  would  get  all  the  pleasure  and  I  none.  I 
hope  the  reader  will  see  how  this  attitude  distinguishes 
me  from  the  selfish  people  who  inhumanly  exult  in 
their  remoteness  from  excursionists. 


It  was  at  Rockaway  Beach  that  I  saw  these  fellow- 
beings  whose  mere  multitude  was  too  much  for  me. 
They  were  otherwise  wholly  without  offence  towards 
me,  and  so  far  as  I  noted,  towards  each  other;  they 
were,  in  fact,  the  most  entirely  peaceable  multitude 
I  ever  saw  in  any  country,  and  the  very  quietest. 
11  161 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

There  were  thousands,  mounting  well  up  towards  tens 
of  thousands,  of  them,  in  every  variety  of  age  and 
sex;  yet  I  heard  no  voice  lifted  above  the  conversa 
tional  level,  except  that  of  some  infant  ignorant  of  its 
privileges  in  a  day  at  the  sea-side,  or  some  showman 
crying  the  attractions  of  the  spectacle  in  his  charge. 
I  used  to  think  the  American  crowds  rather  boister 
ous  and  unruly,  and  many  years  ago,  when  I  lived 
in  Italy,  I  celebrated  the  greater  amiability  and  self- 
control  of  the  Italian  crowds.  But  we  have  certainly 
changed  all  that  within  a  generation,  and  if  what  I 
saw  the  other  day  was  a  typical  New  York  crowd, 
then  the  popular  joy  of  our  poorer  classes  is  no  longer 
the  terror  it  once  was  to  the  peaceful  observer.  The 
tough  was  not  visibly  present,  nor  the  toughness, 
either  of  the  pure  native  East  Side  stock  or  of  the  Celtic 
extraction;  yet  there  were  large  numbers  of  Amer 
icans  with  rather  fewer  recognizable  Irish  among  the 
masses,  who  were  mainly  Germans,  Russians,  Poles, 
and  the  Jews  of  these  several  nationalities. 

There  was  eating  and  drinking  without  limit,  on 
every  hand  and  in  every  kind,  at  the  booths  abound 
ing  in  fried  sea-food,  and  at  the  tables  under  all  the 
wide-spreading  verandas  of  the  hotels  and  restaurants  ; 
yet  I  saw  not  one  drunken  man,  and  of  course  not 
any  drunken  women.  No  one  that  I  saw  was  even 
affected  by  drink,  and  no  one  was  guilty  of  any  rude 
or  unseemly  behavior.  The  crowd  was,  in  short,  a 
monument  to  the  democratic  ideal  of  life  in  that  very 
important  expression  of  life,  personal  conduct,  I  have 
not  any  notion  who  or  what  the  people  were,  or  how 
virtuous  or  vicious  they  privately  might  be;  but  I 
am  sure  that  no  society  assemblage  could  be  of  a 
goodlier  outside;  and  to  be  of  a  goodly  outside  is  all 
that  the  mere  spectator  has  a  right  to  ask  of  any 
crowd. 

162 


THE   BEACH   AT   ROCKAWAY 

I  fancied,  however,  that  great  numbers  of  this  crowd, 
or  at  least  all  the  Americans  in  it,  were  Long-Islanders 
from  the  inland  farms  and  villages  within  easy  dis 
tance  of  the  beach.  They  had  probably  the  heredi 
tary  habit  of  coming  to  it,  for  it  was  a  favorite  resort 
in  the  time  of  their  fathers  and  grandfathers,  who 
had— 

— "  many  an  hour  whiled  away 
Listening  to  the  breakers'  roar 

That  washed  the  beach  at  Rockaway." 

But  the  clothing  store  and  the  paper  pattern  have 
equalized  the  cheaper  dress  of  the  people  so  that  you 
can  no  longer  know  citizen  and  countryman  apart  by 
their  clothes,  still  less  citizeness  and  countrywoman; 
and  I  can  only  conjecture  that  the  foreign-looking  folk 
I  saw  were  from  New  York  and  Brooklyn.  They 
came  by  boat,  and  came  and  went  by  the  continual 
ly  arriving  and  departing  trains,  and  last  but  not 
least  by  bicycles,  both  sexes.  A  few  came  in  the 
public  carriages  and  omnibuses  of  the  neighborhood, 
but  by  far  the  vaster  number  whom  neither  the  boats 
nor  the  trains  had  brought  had  their  own  vehicles, 
the  all-pervading  bicycles,  which  no  one  seemed  so 
poor  as  not  to  be  able  to  keep.  The  bicyclers  stormed 
into  the  frantic  village  of  the  beach  the  whole  after 
noon,  in  the  proportion  of  one  woman  to  five  men, 
and  most  of  these  must  have  ridden  down  on  their 
wheels  from  the  great  cities.  Boys  ran  about  in  the 
roadway  with  bunches  of  brasses,  to  check  the  wheels, 
and  put  them  for  safe-keeping  in  what  had  once  been 
the  stable-yards  of  the  hotels;  the  restaurants  had 
racks  for  them,  where  you  could  see  them  in  solid 
masses,  side  by  side,  for  a  hundred  feet,  and  no  shop 
was  without  its  door-side  rack,  which  the  wheelman 
might  slide  his  wheel  into  when  he  stopped  for  a  soda, 

163 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

a  cigar,  or  a  sandwich.  All  along  the  road  the  gay 
bicycler  and  bicycless  swarmed  upon  the  piazzas  of 
the  inns,  munching,  lunching,  while  their  wheels 
formed  a  fantastic  decoration  for  the  underpinning 
of  the  house  and  a  novel  balustering  for  the  steps. 


II 

The  amusements  provided  for  these  throngs  of  peo 
ple  were  not  different  from  those  provided  for  throngs 
of  people  everywhere,  who  must  be  of  much  the  same 
mind  and  taste  the  world  over.  I  had  fine  moments 
when  I  moved  in  an  illusion  of  the  Midway  Plaisance ; 
again  I  was  at  the  Fete  de  Neuilly,  with  all  of  Paris 
but  the  accent  about  me;  yet  again  the  county  agri 
cultural  fairs  of  my  youth  spread  their  spectral  joys 
before  me.  At  none  of  these  places,  however,  was 
there  a  sounding  sea  or  a  mountainous  chute,  and  I 
made  haste  to  experience  the  variety  these  afforded, 
beginning  with  the  chute,  since  the  sea  was  always 
there,  and  the  chute  might  be  closed  for  the  day  if  I 
waited  to  view  it  last.  I  meant  only  to  enjoy  the  pleas 
ure  of  others  in  it,  and  I  confined  my  own  participation 
to  the  ascent  of  the  height  from  which  the  boat  plunges 
down  the  watery  steep  into  the  oblong  pool  below. 
When  I  bought  my  ticket  for  the  car  that  carried  pas 
sengers  up,  they  gave  me  also  a  pasteboard  medal, 
certifying  for  me,  "You  have  shot  the  chute/'  and  I 
resolved  to  keep  this  and  show  it  to  doubting  friends 
as  a  proof  of  my  daring;  but  it  is  a  curious  evidence 
of  my  unfitness  for  such  deceptions  that  I  afterwards 
could  not  find  the  medal.  So  I  will  frankly  own  that 
for  me  it  was  quite  enough  to  see  others  shoot  the  chute, 
and  that  I  came  tamely  down  myself  in  the  car.  There 
is  a  very  charming  view  from  the  top,  of  the  sea  with 

164 


THE   BEACH    AT    ROCKAWAY 

its  ships,  and  all  the  mad  gayety  of  the  shore,  but  of 
course  my  main  object  was  to  exult  in  the  wild  ab 
surdity  of  those  who  shot  the  chute.  There  was  al 
ways  a  lady  among  the  people  in  the  clumsy  flat-boat 
that  flew  down  the  long  track,  and  she  tried  usually 
to  be  a  pretty  girl,  who  clutched  her  friends  and  lovers 
and  shrieked  aloud  in  her  flight ;  but  sometimes  it  was 
a  sober  mother  of  a  family,  with  her  brood  about  her, 
who  was  probably  meditating,  all  the  way,  the  incul 
pation  of  their  father  for  any  harm  that  came  of  it. 
Apparently  no  harm  came  of  it  in  any  case.  The  boat 
struck  the  water  with  the  impetus  gained  from  a  half- 
perpendicular  slide  of  a  hundred  feet,  bounded  high 
into  the  air,  struck  again  and  again,  and  so  flounced 
awkwardly  across  the  pond  to  the  farther  shore,  where 
the  passengers  debarked  and  went  away  to  commune 
with  their  viscera,  and  to  get  their  breath  as  they  could. 
I  did  not  ask  any  of  them  what  their  emotions  or  sen 
sations  were,  but,  so  far  as  I  could  conjecture,  the 
experience  of  shooting  the  chute  must  comprise  the 
rare  transport  of  a  fall  from  a  ten-story  building  and 
the  delight  of  a  tempestuous  passage  of  the  Atlantic, 
powerfully  condensed. 

The  mere  sight  was  so  athletic  that  it  took  away 
any  appetite  I  might  have  had  to  witness  the  feats  of 
strength  performed  by  Madame  La  Noire  at  the  near 
est  booth  on  my  coming  out,  though  madame  herself 
was  at  the  door  to  testify,  in  her  own  living  picture, 
how  much  muscular  force  may  be  masked  in  vast 
masses  of  adipose.  She  had  a  weary,  bored  look, 
and  was  not  without  her  pathos,  poor  soul,  as  few  of 
those  are  who  amuse  the  public;  but  I  could  not  find 
her  quite  justifiable  as  a  Sunday  entertainment.  One 
forgot,  however,  what  day  it  was,  and  for  the  time 
I  did  not  pretend  .to  be  so  much  better  than  my  neigh 
bors  that  I  would  not  compromise  upon  a  visit  to  an 

165 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

animal  show  a  little  farther  on.  It  was  a  pretty  fair 
collection  of  beasts  that  had  once  been  wild,  perhaps, 
and  in  the  cage  of  the  lions  there  was  a  slight,  sad- 
looking,  long-haired  young  man,  exciting  them  to 
madness  by  blows  of  a  whip  and  pistol-shots,  whom 
I  was  extremely  glad  to  have  get  away  without  being 
torn  in  pieces,  or  at  least  bitten  in  two.  A  little  later 
I  saw  him  at  the  door  of  the  tent,  very  breathless,  di 
shevelled,  and  as  to  his  dress  not  of  the  spotlessness 
one  could  wish.  But  perhaps  spotlessness  is  not  com 
patible  with  the  intimacy  of  lions  and  lionesses.  He 
had  had  his  little  triumph;  one  spectator  of  his  feat 
had  declared  that  you  would  not  see  anything  like  that 
at  Coney  Island;  and  soiled  and  dusty  as  he  was  in 
his  cotton  tights,  he  was  preferable  to  the  living  pict 
ure  of  a  young  lady  whom  he  replaced  as  an  attrac-' 
tion  of  the  show.  It  was  professedly  a  moral  show; 
the  manager  exhorted  us  as  we  came  out  to  say  whether 
it  was  good  or  not;  and  in  the  box-office  sat  a  kind 
and  motherly  faced  matron  who  would  have  appar 
ently  abhorred  to  look  upon  a  living  picture  at  any 
distance,  much  less  have  it  at  her  elbow. 

Upon  the  whole,  there  seemed  a  melancholy  mis 
take  in  it  all;  the  people  to  whom  the  showmen  made 
their  appeal  were  all  so  much  better,  evidently,  than 
the  showmen  supposed;  the  showmen  themselves  ap 
peared  harmless  enough,  and  one  could  not  say  that 
there  was  personally  any  harm  in  the  living  picture ; 
rather  she  looked  listless  and  dull, 'but  as  to  the  face 
respectable  enough. 

I  would  not  give  the  impression  that  most  of  the 
amusements  were  not  in  every  respect  decorous.  As 
a  means  of  pleasure,  the  merry-go-round,  both  hori 
zontal  with  horses  and  vertical  with  swinging  cradles, 
prevailed,  and  was  none  the  worse  for  being  called 
by  the  French  name  of  carrousel,  for  our  people  an- 

166 


THE   BEACH   AT  ROCKAWAY 

glicize  the  word,  and  squeeze  the  last  drop  of  Gallic 
wickedness  from  it  by  pronouncing  it  carousal.  At 
every  other  step  there  were  machines  for  weighing 
you  and  ascertaining  your  height;  there  were  pho 
tographers'  booths,  and  X-ray  apparatus  for  show 
ing  you  the  inside  of  your  watch;  and  in  one  open 
tent  I  saw  a  gentleman  (with  his  back  to  the  public) 
having  his  fortune  read  in  the  lines  of  his  hand  by 
an  Egyptian  seeress.  Of  course  there  was  everywhere 
soda,  and  places  of  the  softer  drinks  abounded. 


Ill 

I  think  you  could  only  get  a  hard  drink  by  order 
ing  something  to  eat  and  sitting  down  to  your  wine 
or  beer  at  a  table.  Again  I  say  that  I  saw  no  effects 
of  drink  in  the  crowd,  and  in  one  of  the  great  restau 
rants  built  out  over  the  sea  on  piers,  where  there  was 
perpetual  dancing  to  the  braying  of  a  brass-band,  the 
cotillon  had  no  fire  imparted  to  its  figures  by  the  fumes 
of  the  bar.  In  fact  it  was  a  very  rigid  sobriety  that 
reigned  here,  governing  the  common  behavior  by 
means  of  the  placards  which  hung  from  the  roof  over 
the  heads  of  the  dancers,  and  repeatedly  announced 
that  gentlemen  were  not  allowed  to  dance  together, 
or  to  carry  umbrellas  or  canes  while  dancing,  while 
all  were  entreated  not  to  spit  on  the  floor. 

The  dancers  looked  happy  and  harmless,  if  not 
very  wise  or  splendid ;  they  seemed  people  of  the  same 
simple  neighborhoods,  village  lovers,  young  wives 
and  husbands,  and  parties  of  friends  who  had  come 
together  for  the  day's  pleasure.  A  slight  mother, 
much  weighed  down  by  a  heavy  baby,  passed,  rapt 
in  an  innocent  envy  of  them,  and  I  think  she  and  the 
child's  father  meant  to  join  them  as  soon  as  they  could 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

find  a  place  where  to  lay  it.  Almost  any  place  would 
do ;  at  another  great  restaurant  I  saw  two  chairs  faced 
together,  and  a  baby  sleeping  on  them  as  quietly  amid 
the  coming  and  going  of  lagers  and  frankfurters  as 
if  in  its  cradle  at  home. 

Lagers  and  frankfurters  were  much  in  evidence 
everywhere,  especially  frankfurters,  which  seemed  to 
have  whole  booths  devoted  to  broiling  them.  They 
disputed  this  dignity  with  soft-shell  crabs,  and  sec 
tions  of  eels,  piled  attractively  on  large  platters,  or 
sizzling  to  an  impassioned  brown  in  deep  skillets  of 
fat.  The  old  acrid  smell  of  frying  brought  back  many 
holidays  of  Italy  to  me,  and  I  was  again  at  times  on 
the  Riva  at  Venice,  and  in  the  Mercato  Vecchio  at  Flor 
ence.  But  the  Continental  Sunday  cannot  be  felt  to 
have  quite  replaced  the  old  American  Sabbath  yet; 
the  Puritan  leaven  works  still,  and  though  so  many 
of  our  own  people  consent  willingly  to  the  transforma 
tion,  I  fancy  they  always  enjoy  themselves  on  Sunday 
with  a  certain  consciousness  of  wrong-doing. 


IV 

I  have  already  said  that  the  spectator  quite  lost 
sense  of  what  day  it  was.  Nothing  could  be  more 
secular  than  all  the  sights  and  sounds.  It  was  the 
Fourth  of  July,  less  the  fire -crackers  and  the  drunk 
enness,  and  it  was  the  high  day  of  the  week.  But 
if  it  was  very  wicked,  and  I  must  recognize  that  the 
scene  would  be  shocking  to  most  of  my  readers,  I  feel 
bound  to  say  that  the  people  themselves  did  not  look 
wicked.  They  looked  harmless;  they  even  looked 
good,  the  most  of  them.  I  am  sorry  to  say  they  were 
not  very  good-looking.  The  women  were  pretty  enough, 
and  the  men  were  handsome  enough;  perhaps  the 

168 


THE   BEACH    AT   ROCKAWAY 

average  was  higher  in  respect  of  beauty  than  the 
average  is  anywhere  else;  I  was  lately  from  New 
England,  where  the  people  were  distinctly  more  hard- 
favored;  but  among  all  those  thousands  at  Rocka- 
way  I  found  no  striking  types.  It  may  be  that  as  we 
grow  older  and  our  satisfaction  with  our  own  looks 
wanes,  we  become  more  fastidious  as  to  the  looks  of 
others.  At  any  rate,  there  seems  to  be  much  less 
beauty  in  the  world  than  there  was  thirty  or  forty 
years  ago. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  dresses  seem  indefinitely 
prettier,  as  they  should  be  in  compensation.  When 
we  were  all  so  handsome  we  could  well  afford  to  wear 
hoops  or  peg-top  trousers,  but  now  it  is  different,  and 
the  poor  things  must  eke  out  their  personal  ungainli- 
ness  with  all  the  devices  of  the  modiste  and  the  tailor. 
I  do  not  mean  that  there  was  any  distinction  in  the 
dress  of  the  crowd,  but  I  saw  nothing  positively  ugly 
or  grotesquely  out  of  taste.  The  costumes  were  as 
good  as  the  customs,  and  I  have  already  celebrated 
the  manners  of  this  crowd.  I  believe  I  must  except 
the  costumes  of  the  bicyclesses,  who  were  unfailingly 
dumpy  in  effect  when  dismounted,  and  who  were  all 
the  more  lamentable  for  tottering  about,  in  their  short 
vskirts,  upon  the  tips  of  their  narrow  little,  sharp-point 
ed,  silly  high- heeled  shoes.  How  severe  I  am!  But 
those  high  heels  seemed  to  take  all  honesty  from 
their  daring  in  the  wholesome  exercise  of  the  wheel, 
and  to  keep  them  in  the  tradition  of  cheap  coquetry 
still,  and  imbecilly  dependent. 


I  have  almost  forgotten  in  the  interest  of  the  human 
vSpectacle  that  there  is  a  sea  somewhere  about  at  Rock- 

169 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

away  Beach,  and  it  is  this  that  the  people  have  come 
for.  I  might  well  forget  that  modest  sea,  it  is  so  built 
out  of  sight  by  the  restaurants  and  bath-houses  and 
switch-backs  and  shops  that  border  it,  and  by  the  hotels 
and  saloons  and  shows  flaring  along  the  road  that 
divides  the  village,  and  the  planked  streets  that  in 
tersect  this.  But  if  you  walk  southward  on  any  of 
the  streets,  you  presently  find  the  planks  foundering  in 
sand,  which  drifts  far  up  over  them,  and  then  you 
find  yourself  in  full  sight  of  the  ocean  and  the  ocean 
bathing.  Swarms  and  heaps  of  people  in  all  lolling 
and  lying  and  wallowing  shapes  strew  the  beach, 
and  the  water  is  full  of  slopping  and  shouting  and 
shrieking  human  creatures,  clinging  with  bare  white 
arms  to  the  life-lines  that  run  from  the  shore  to  the 
buoys;  beyond  these  the  life-guard  stays  himself  in 
his  boat  with  outspread  oars,  and  rocks  on  the  incom 
ing  surf. 

All  that  you  can  say  of  it  is  that  it  is  queer.  It  is 
not  picturesque,  or  poetic,  or  dramatic;  it  is  queer. 
An  enfilading  glance  gives  this  impression  and  no 
other;  if  you  go  to  the  balcony  of  the  nearest  marine 
restaurant  for  a  flanking  eye-shot,  it  is  still  queer, 
with  the  added  effect,  in  all  those  arms  upstretched 
to  the  life-lines,  of  frogs'  legs  inverted  in  a  downward 
plunge. 

On  the  sand  before  this  spectacle  I  talked  with  a 
philosopher  of  humble  condition  who  backed  upon 
me  and  knocked  my  umbrella  out  of  my  hpM.  This 
made  us  beg  each  other's  pardon;  he  said  that  he  did 
not  know  I  was  there,  and  I  said  it  did  not  matter. 
Then  we  both  looked  at  the  bathing,  and  he  said : 

"I  don't  like  that." 

"Why,"  I  asked,  "do  you  see  any  harm  in  it?" 

"  No.  But  I  don't  like  the  looks  of  it.  It  ain't  nice. 
It's— queer." 

170 


THE   BEACH    AT    ROCKAWAY 

It  was  indeed  like  one  of  those  uncomfortable  dreams 
where  you  are  not  dressed  sufficiently  for  company, 
or  perhaps  at  all,  and  yet  are  making  a  very  pub 
lic  appearance.  This  promiscuous  bathing  was  not 
much  in  excess  of  the  convention  that  governs  the 
sea-bathing  of  the  politest  people;  it  could  not  be; 
and  it  was  marked  by  no  grave  misconduct.  Here 
and  there  a  gentleman  was  teaching  a  lady  to  swim, 
with  his  arms  round  her ;  here  and  there  a  wild  nereid 
was  splashing  another;  a  young  Jew  pursued  a  flight 
of  naiads  with  a  section  of  dead  eel  in  his  hand.  But 
otherwise  all  was  a  damp  and  dreary  decorum.  I 
challenged  my  philosopher  in  vain  for  a  specific  cause 
of  his  dislike  of  the  scene. 

Most  of  the  people  on  the  sand  were  in  bathing- 
dress,  but  there  were  a  multitude  of  others  who  had 
apparently  come  for  the  sea-air  and  not  the  sea-bath 
ing.  A  mother  sat  with  a  sick  child  on  her  knees; 
babies  were  cradled  in  the  sand  asleep,  and  people 
walked  carefully  round  and  over  them.  There  were 
everywhere  a  great  many  poor  mothers  and  children, 
who  seemed  getting  the  most  of  the  good  that  was 
going. 

VI 

But  upon  the  whole,  though  I  drove  away  from  the 
beach  celebrating  the  good  temper  and  the  good  order 
of  the  scene  to  an  applausive  driver,  I  have  since  thought 
of  it  as  rather  melancholy.  It  was  in  fact  no  wiser  or 
livelier  than  a  society  function  in  the  means  of  enjoy 
ment  it  afforded.  The  best  thing  about  it  was  that  it 
left  the  guests  very  much  to  their  own  devices.  The 
established  pleasures  were  clumsy  and  tiresome-look 
ing;  but  one  could  eschew  them.  The  more  of  them 
one  eschewed,  the  merrier  perhaps;  for  I  doubt  if  the 

171 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

race  is  formed  for  much  pleasure;  and  even  a  day's 
rest  is  more  than  most  people  can  bear.  They  endure 
it  in  passing,  but  they  get  home  weary  and  cross,  even 
after  a  twenty-mile  run  on  the  wheel.  The  road,  by- 
the-by,  was  full  of  homeward  wheels  by  this  time, 
single  and  double  and  tandem,  and  my  driver  pro 
fessed  that  their  multitude  greatly  increased  the  diffi 
culties  of  his  profession. 


AMERICAN  LITERARY  CENTRES 

ONE  of  the  facts  which  we  Americans  have  a  diffi 
culty  in  making  clear  to  a  rather  inattentive 
world  outside  is  that,  while  we  have  apparently  a  lit 
erature  of  our  own,  we  have  no  literary  centre.  We 
have  so  much  literature  that  from  time  to  time  it  seems 
even  to  us  we  must  have  a  literary  centre.  We  say  to 
ourselves,  with  a  good  deal  of  logic,  Where  there  is  so 
much  smoke  there  must  be  some  fire,  or  at  least  a  fire 
place.  But  it  is  just  here  that,  misled  by  tradition,  and 
even  by  history,  we  deceive  ourselves.  Really,  we  have 
no  fireplace  for  such  fire  as  we  have  kindled ;  or,  if  any 
one  is  disposed  to  deny  this,  then  I  say,  we  have  a  dozen 
fireplaces ;  which  is  quite  as  bad,  so  far  as  the  u  rx 
of  a  literary  centre  is  concerned,  if  it  is  not  worse. 

I  once  proved  this  fact  to  my  own  satisfaction  in  some 
papers  which  I  wrote  several  years  ago ;  but  it  appears, 
from  a  question  which  has  lately  come  to  mef  rom  Eng 
land,  that  I  did  not  carry  conviction  quite  So  far  as  that 
island ;  and  I  still  have  my  work  all  before  me,  if  I  un 
derstand  the  London  friend  who  wishes  "a  comparative 
view  of  the  centres  of  literary  production  "  among  us ; 
"  how  and  why  they  change ;  how  they  stand  at  present  ; 
and  what  is  the  relation,  for  instance,  of  Boston  to  other 
such  centres/' 


Here,  if  I  cut  my  coat  according  to  my  cloth,  I  should 
have  a  garment  which  this  whole  volume  would  hard- 

173 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

ly  stuff  out  with  its  form;  and  I  have  a  fancy  that  if  I 
begin  by  answering,  as  I  have  sometimes  rather  too 
succinctly  done,  that  we;  have  no  more  a  single  liter 
ary  centre  than  Italy  or  than  Germany  has  (or  had  be 
fore  their  unification),  I  shall  not  be  taken  at  my  word. 
I  shall  be  right,  all  the  same,  and  if  I  am  told  that 
in  those  countries  there  is  now  a  tendency  to  such  a 
centre,  I  can  only  say  that  there  is  none  in  this,  and 
that,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  we  get  further  every  day  from 
having  such  a  centre.  The  fault,  if  it  is  a  fault,  grows 
upon  us,  for  the  whole  present  tendency  of  American 
life  is  centrifugal,  and  just  so  far  as  literature  is  the 
language  of  our  life,  it  shares  this  tendency.  I  do  not 
attempt  to  say  how  it  will  be  when,  in  order  to  spread 
ourselves  over  the  earth,  and  convincingly  to  preach 
the  blessings  of  our  deeply  incorporated  civilization 
by  the  mouths  of  our  eight-inch  guns,  the  mind  of  the 
nation  shall  be  politically  centred  at  some  capital; 
that  is  the  function  of  prophecy,  and  I  am  only  writ- 
ir  ^  '^erary  history,  on  a  very  small  scale,  with  a  some- 
wh.it  crushing  sense  of  limits. 

Once,  twice,  thrice  there  was  apparently  an  Amer 
ican  literary  centre:  at  Philadelphia,  from  the  time 
Franklin  ^ent  to  live  there  until  the  death  of  Charles 
Brockden  Biown,  our  first  romancer;  then  at  New 
York,  during  the  period  which  may  be  roughly  de 
scribed  as  that  of  Irving,  Poe,  Willis,  and  Bryant; 
then  at  Boston,  for  the  thirty  or  forty  years  illumined 
by  the  presence  of  Longfellow,  Lowell,  Whittier,  Haw 
thorne,  Emerson,  Holmes,  Prescott,  Parkman,  and 
many  lesser  lights.  These  are  all  still  great  publish 
ing  centres.  If  it  were  not  that  the  house  with  the 
largest  list  of  American  authors  was  still  at  Boston, 
I  should  say  New  York  was  now  the  chief  publishing 
centre;  but  in  the  sense  that  London  and  Paris,  or 
even  Madrid  and  Petersburg,  are  literary  centres,  with 

174 


AMERICAN   LITERARY    CENTRES 

a  controlling  influence  throughout  England  and  France, 
Spain  and  Russia,  neither  New  York  nor  Boston  is 
now  our  literary  centre,  whatever  they  may  once  have 
been.  Not  to  take  Philadelphia  too  seriously,  I  may 
note  that  when  New  York  seemed  our  literary  centre 
Irving  alone  among  those  who  gave  it  lustre  was  a 
New-Yorker,  and  he  mainly  lived  abroad;  Bryant, 
who  was  a  New-Englander,  was  alone  constant  to  the 
city  of  his  adoption;  Willis,  a  Bostonian,  and  Poe,  a 
Marylander,  went  and  came  as  their  poverty  or  their 
prosperity  compelled  or  invited;  neither  dwelt  here 
unbrokenly,  and  Poe  did  not  even  die  here,  though 
he  often  came  near  starving.  One  cannot  then  strict 
ly  speak  of  any  early  American  literary  centre  except 
Boston,  and  Boston,  strictly  speaking,  was  the  New 
England  literary  centre. 

However,  we  had  really  no  use  for  an  American 
literary  centre  before  the  Civil  War,  for  it  was  only 
after  the  Civil  War  that  we  really  began  to  have  an 
American  literature.  Up  to  that  time  we  had  a  Co 
lonial  literature,  a  Knickerbocker  literature,  and  a 
New  England  literature.  But  as  soon  as  the  country 
began  to  feel  its  life  in  every  limb  with  the  coming  of 
peace,  it  began  to  speak  in  the  varying  accents  of  all 
the  different  sections — North,  East,  South,  West,  and 
Farthest  West ;  but  not  before  that  time. 


II 

Perhaps  the  first  note  of  this  national  concord,  or 
discord,  was  sounded  from  California,  in  the  voices 
of  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  of  Mark  Twain,  of  Mr.  Charles 
Warren  Stoddard  (I  am  sorry  for  those  who  do  not 
know  his  beautiful  Idyls  of  the  South  Seas),  and  others 
of  the  remarkable  group  of  poets  and  humorists  whom 

175 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

these  names  must  stand  for.  The  San  Francisco 
school  briefly  flourished  from  1867  till  1872  or  so,  and 
while  it  endured  it  made  San  Francisco  the  first  na 
tional  literary  centre  we  ever  had,  for  its  writers  were 
of  every  American  origin  except  Californian. 

After  the  Pacific  Slope,  the  great  Middle  West  found 
utterance  in  the  dialect  verse  of  Mr.  John  Hay,  and 
after  that  began  the  exploitation  of  all  the  local  par 
lances,  which  has  sometimes  seemed  to  stop,  and  then 
has  begun  again.  It  went  on  in  the  South  in  the 
fables  of  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris's  Uncle  Remus, 
and  in  the  fiction  of  Miss  Murfree,  who  so  long  mas 
queraded  as  Charles  Egbert  Craddock.  Louisiana 
found  expression  in  the  Creole  stories  of  Mr.  G.  W. 
Cable,  Indiana  in  the  Hoosier  poems  of  Mr.  James 
Whitcomb  Riley,  and  central  New  York  in  the  novels 
of  Mr.  Harold  Frederic ;  but  nowhere  was  the  new  im 
pulse  so  firmly  and  finely  directed  as  in  New  England, 
where  Miss  Sarah  Orne  Jewett's  studies  of  country 
life  antedated  Miss  Mary  Wilkins's  work.  To  be 
sure,  the  portrayal  of  Yankee  character  began  before 
either  of  these  artists  was  known;  Lowell's  Bigelow 
Papers  first  reflected  it ;  Mrs.  Stowe's  Old  Town  Stories 
caught  it  again  and  again;  Mrs.  Harriet  Prescott 
Spofford,  in  her  unromantic  moods,  was  of  an  excel 
lent  fidelity  to  it;  and  Mrs.  Rose  Terry  Cooke  was 
even  truer  to  the  New  England  of  Connecticut.  With 
the  later  group  Mrs.  Lily  Chase  Wyman  has  pictured 
Rhode  Island  work-life  with  truth  pitiless  to  the  be 
holder,  and  full  of  that  tender  humanity  for  the  ma 
terial  which  characterizes  Russian  fiction. 

Mr.  James  Lane  Allen  has  let  in  the  light  upon 
Kentucky ;  the  Red  Men  and  White  of  the  great  plains 
have  found  their  interpreter  in  Mr.  Owen  Wister,  a 
young  Philadelphian  witness  of  their  dramatic  con 
ditions  and  characteristics;  Mr.  Hanilin  Garland  had 


AMERICAN   LITERARY   CENTRES 

already  expressed  the  sad  circumstances  of  the  rural 
Northwest  in  his  pathetic  idyls,  colored  from  the  ex 
perience  of  one  who  had  been  part  of  what  he  saw. 
Later  came  Mr.  Henry  B.  Fuller,  and  gave  us  what 
was  hardest  and  most  sordid,  as  well  as  something 
of  what  was  most  touching  and  most  amusing,  in  the 
hurly-burly  of  Chicago. 

Ill 

A  survey  of  this  sort  imparts  no  just  sense  of  the 
facts,  and  I  own  that  I  am  impatient  of  merely  nam 
ing  authors  and  books  that  each  tempt  me  to  an  ex 
pansion  far  beyond  the  limits  of  this  essay;  for,  if  I 
may  be  so  personal,  I  have  watched  the  growth  of  our 
literature  in  Americanism  with  intense  sympathy. 
In  my  poor  way  I  have  always  liked  the  truth,  and  in 
times  past  I  am  afraid  that  I  have  helped  to  make  it 
odious  to  those  who  believed  beauty  was  something 
different ;  but  I  hope  that  I  shall  not  now  be  doing  our 
decentralized  literature  a  disservice  by  saying  that  its 
chief  value  is  its  honesty,  its  fidelity  to  our  decentral 
ized  life.  Sometimes  I  wish  this  were  a  little  more 
constant ;  but  upon  the  whole  I  have  no  reason  to  com 
plain  ;  and  I  think  that  as  a  very  interested  spectator  of 
New  York  I  have  reason  to  be  content  with  the  verac 
ity  with  which  some  phases  of  it  have  been  rendered. 
The  lightning — or  the  flash-light,  to  speak  more  ac 
curately — has  been  rather  late  in  striking  this  un 
gainly  metropolis,  but  it  has  already  got  in  its  work 
with  notable  effect  at  some  points.  This  began,  I 
believe,  with  the  local  dramas  of  Mr.  Edward  Har- 
rigan,  a  species  of  farces,  or  sketches  of  character, 
loosely  hung  together,  with  little  sequence  or  relevancy, 
upon  the  thread  of  a  plot  which  would  keep  the  stage 
for  two  or  three  hours.  It  was  very  rough  magic,  as 

177 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

a  whole,  but  in  parts  it  was  exquisite,  and  it  held  the 
mirror  up  towards  politics  on  their  social  and  political 
side,  and  gave  us  East-Side  types — Irish,  German, 
negro,  and  Italian — which  were  instantly  recognizable 
and  deliciously  satisfying.  I  never  could  understand 
why  Mr.  Harrigan  did  not  go  further,  but  perhaps  he 
had  gone  far  enough;  and,  at  any  rate,  he  left  the 
field  open  for  others.  The  next  to  appear  noticeably 
in  it  was  Mr.  Stephen  Crane,  whose  Red  Badge  of 
Courage  wronged  the  finer  art  which  he  showed  in 
such  New  York  studies  as  Maggie:  A  Girl  of  the  Streets, 
and  George's  Mother.  He  has  been  followed  by  Abra 
ham  Cahan,  a  Russian  Hebrew,  who  has  done  por 
traits  of  his  race  and  nation  with  uncommon  power. 
They  are  the  very  Russian  Hebrews  of  Hester  Street 
translated  from  their  native  Yiddish  into  English, 
which  the  author  mastered  after  coming  here  in  his 
early  manhood.  He  brought  to  his  work  the  artistic 
qualities  of  both  the  Slav  and  the  Jew,  and  in  his  Jekl: 
A  Story  of  the  Ghetto,  he  gave  proof  of  talent  which 
his  more  recent  book  of  sketches — The  Imported  Bride 
groom —  confirms.  He  sees  his  people  humorously, 
and  he  is  as  unsparing  of  their  sordidness  as  he  is 
compassionate  of  their  hard  circumstance  and  the 
somewhat  frowsy  pathos  of  their  lives.  He  is  a  Social 
ist,  but  his  fiction  is  wholly  without  "  tendentious- 
ness." 

A  good  many  years  ago — ten  or  twelve,  at  least — 
Mr.  Harry  Harland  had  shown  us  some  politer  New 
York  Jews,  with  a  romantic  coloring,  though  with 
genuine  feeling  for  the  novelty  and  picturesqueness 
of  his  material ;  but  I  do  not  think  of  any  one  who  has 
adequately  dealt  with  our  Gentile  society.  Mr.  James 
has  treated  it  historically  in  Washington  Square,  and 
more  modernly  in  some  passages  of  The  Bostonians,  as 
well  as  in  some  of  his  shorter  stories;  Mr.  Edgar  Faw- 

178 


AMERICAN   LITERARY   CENTRES 

cett  has  dealt  with  it  intelligently  and  authoritatively 
in  a  novel  or  two;  and  Mr.  Brander  Matthews  has 
sketched  it,  in  this  aspect,  and  that  with  his  Gallic 
cleverness,  neatness,  and  point.  In  the  novel,  His  Fa 
ther's  Son,  he  in  fact  faces  it  squarely  and  renders  cer 
tain  forms  of  it  with  masterly  skill.  He  has  done 
something  more  distinctive  still  in  The  Action  and  the 
Word,  one  of  the  best  American  stories  I  know.  But 
except  for  these  writers,  our  literature  has  hardly  taken 
to  New  York  society. 

IV 

It  is  an  even  thing :  New  York  society  has  not  taken 
to  our  literature.  New  York  publishes  it,  criticises  it, 
and  circulates  it,  but  I  doubt  if  New  York  society  much 
reads  it  or  cares  for  it,  and  New  York  is  therefore  by  no 
means  the  literary  centre  that  Boston  once  was,  though 
a  large  number  of  our  literary  men  live  in  or  about 
New  York.  Boston,  in  my  time  at  least,  had  dis 
tinctly  a  literary  atmosphere,  which  more  or  less  per 
vaded  society;  but  New  York  has  distinctly  nothing 
of  the  kind,  in  any  pervasive  sense.  It  is  a  vast  mart, 
and  literature  is  one  of  the  things  marketed  here;  but 
our  good  society  cares  no  more  for  it  than  for  some 
other  products  bought  and  sold  here;  it  does  not  care 
nearly  so  much  for  books  as  for  horses  or  for  stocks, 
and  I  suppose  it  is  not  unlike  the  good  society  of  any 
other  metropolis  in  this.  To  the  general,  here,  jour 
nalism  is  a  far  more  appreciable  thing  than  literature, 
and  has  greater  recognition,  for  some  very  good  rea 
sons;  but  in  Boston  literature  had  vastly  more  honor, 
and  even  more  popular  recognition,  than  journalism. 
There  journalism  desired  to  be  literary,  and  here  lit 
erature  has  to  try  hard  not  to  be  journalistic.  If  New 
York  is  a  literary  centre  on  the  business  side,  as  Lon- 

179 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

don  is,  Boston  was  a  literary  centre,  as  Weimar  was, 
and  as  Edinburgh  was.  It  felt  literature,  as  those 
capitals  felt  it,  and  if  it  did  not  love  it  quite  so  much 
as  might  seem,  it  always  respected  it. 

To  be  quite  clear  in  what  I  wish  to  say  of  the  present 
relation  of  Boston  to  our  other  literary  centres,  I  must 
repeat  that  we  have  now  no  such  literary  centre  as 
Boston  was.  Boston  itself  has  perhaps  outgrown  the 
literary  consciousness  which  formerly  distinguished 
it  from  all  our  other  large  towns.  In  a  place  of  near 
ly  a  million  people  (I  count  in  the  outlying  places) 
newspapers  must  be  more  than  books ;  and  that  alone 
says  everything. 

Mr.  Aldrich  once  noticed  that  whenever  an  author 
died  in  Boston,  the  New-Yorkers  thought  they  had 
a  literary  centre;  and  it  is  by  some  such  means  that 
the  primacy  has  passed  from  Boston,  even  if  it  has 
not  passed  to  New  York.  But  still  there  is  enough 
literature  left  in  the  body  at  Boston  to  keep  her  first 
among  equals  in  some  things,  if  not  easily  first  in  all. 

Mr.  Aldrich  himself  lives  in  Boston,  and  he  is,  with 
Mr.  Stedman,  the  foremost  of  our  poets.  At  Cam 
bridge  live  Colonel  T.  W.  Higginson,  an  essayist  in  a 
certain  sort  without  rival  among  us ;  and  Mr.  William 
James,  the  most  interesting  and  the  most  literary  of 
psychologists,  whose  repute  is  European  as  well  as 
American.  Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton  alone  survives 
of  the  earlier  Cambridge  group  —  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
Richard  Henry  Dana,  Louis  Agassiz,  Francis  J.  Child, 
and  Henry  James,  the  father  of  the  novelist  and  the 
psychologist. 

To  Boston  Mr.  James  Ford  Rhodes,  the  latest  of  our 
abler  historians,  has  gone  from  Ohio ;  and  there  Mr. 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  the  Massachusetts  Senator,  whose 
work  in  literature  is  making  itself  more  and  more 
known,  was  born  and  belongs,  politically,  socially,  and 

180 


AMERICAN   LITERARY   CENTRES 

intellectually.  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe,  a  poet  of  wide 
fame  in  an  elder  generation,  lives  there;  Mr.  T.  B.  Al- 
drich  lives  there;  and  thereabouts  live  Mrs.  Elizabeth 
Stuart  Phelps  Ward  and  Mrs.  Harriet  Prescott  Spof- 
ford,  the  first  of  a  fame  beyond  the  last,  who  was 
known  to  us  so  long  before  her.  Then  at  Boston,  or 
near  Boston,  live  those  artists  supreme  in  the  kind  of 
short  story  which  we  have  carried  so  far :  Miss  Jewett, 
Miss  Wilkins,  Miss  Alice  Brown,  Mrs.  Chase- Wyman, 
and  Miss  Gertrude  Smith,  who  comes  from  Kansas, 
and  writes  of  the  prairie  farm-life,  though  she  leaves 
Mr.  E.  W.  Howe  (of  The  Story  of  a  Country  Town 
and  presently  of  the  Atchison  Daily  Globe}  to  consti 
tute,  with  the  humorous  poet  Ironquill,  a  frontier  lit 
erary  centre  at  Topeka.  Of  Boston,  too,  though  she 
is  of  western  Pennsylvania  origin,  is  Mrs.  Margaret 
Deland,  one  of  our  most  successful  novelists.  Miss 
Wilkins  has  married  out  of  Massachusetts  into  New 
Jersey,  and  is  the  neighbor  of  Mr.  H.  M.  Alden  at 
Metuchen. 

All  these  are  more  or  less  embodied  and  represented 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  still  the  most  literary,  and  in 
many  things  still  the  first  of  our  magazines.  Finally, 
after  the  chief  publishing  house  in  New  York,  the 
greatest  American  publishing  house  is  in  Boston,  with 
by  far  the  largest  list  of  the  best  American  books. 
Recently  several  firms  of  younger  vigor  and  valor  have 
recruited  the  wasted  ranks  of  the  Boston  publishers, 
and  are  especially  to  be  noted  for  the  number  of  rather 
nice  new  poets  they  give  to  the  light. 


Dealing  with  the  question   geographically,   in  the 
right  American  way,  we  descend  to  Hartford  oblique- 

181 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

ly  by  way  of  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  where,  in  a 
little  city  of  fifty  thousand,  a  newspaper  of  metropol 
itan  influence  and  of  distinctly  literary  tone  is  pub 
lished.  At  Hartford  while  Charles  Dudley  Warner 
lived,  there  was  an  indisputable  literary  centre;  Mark 
Twain  lives  there  no  longer,  and  now  we  can  scarcely 
count  Hartford  among  our  literary  centres,  though  it 
is  a  publishing  centre  of  much  activity  in  subscription 
books. 

At  New  Haven,  Yale  University  has  latterly  at 
tracted  Mr.  William  H.  Bishop,  whose  novels  I  always 
liked  for  the  best  reasons,  and  has  long  held  Professor 
J.  T.  Lounsbury,  who  is,  since  Professor  Child's  death 
at  Cambridge,  our  best  Chaucer  scholar.  Mr.  Donald 
G.  Mitchell,  once  endeared  to  the  whole  fickle  Amer 
ican  public  by  his  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  and  his  Dream 
Life,  dwells  on  the  borders  of  the  pleasant  town,  which 
is  also  the  home  of  Mr.  J.  W.  De  Forest,  the  earliest 
real  American  novelist,  and  for  certain  gifts  in  seeing 
and  telling  our  life  also  one  of  the  greatest. 

As  to  New  York  (where  the  imagination  may  ar 
rive  daily  from  New  Haven,  either  by  a  Sound  boat 
or  by  eight  or  ten  of  the  swiftest  express  trains  in  the 
world),  I  confess  I  am  more  and  more  puzzled.  Here 
abide  the  poets,  Mr.  R.  H.  Stoddard,  Mr.  E.  C.  Sted- 
man,  Mr.  R.  W.  Gilder,  and  many  whom  an  envious 
etcetera  must  hide  from  view;  the  fictionists,  Mr.  R. 
H.  Davis,  Mrs.  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin,  Mr.  Brander 
Matthews,  Mr.  Frank  Hopkinson  Smith,  Mr.  Abraham 
Cahan,  Mr.  Frank  Norris,  and  Mr.  James  Lane  Allen, 
who  has  left  Kentucky  to  join  the  large  Southern 
contingent,  which  includes  Mrs.  Burton  Harrison 
and  Mrs.  McEnery  Stuart;  the  historians,  Professor 
William  M.  Sloane  and  Dr.  Eggleston  (reformed  from 
a  novelist) ;  the  literary  and  religious  and  economic 
essayists,  Mr.  Hamilton  W.  Mabie,  Mr.  H.  M.  AldenJ 

182 


AMERICAN   LITERARY   CENTRES 

Mr.  J.  J.  Chapman,  and  Mr.  E.  L.  Godkin,  with  critics, 
dramatists,  satirists,  magazinists,  and  journalists  of 
literary  stamp  in  number  to  convince  the  wavering 
reason  against  itself  that  here  beyond  all  question  is 
the  great  literary  centre  of  these  States.  There  is 
an  Authors'  Club,  which  alone  includes  a  hundred 
and  fifty  authors,  and,  if  you  come  to  editors,  there  is 
simply  no  end.  Magazines  are  published  here  and 
circulated  hence  throughout  the  land  by  millions ;  and 
books  by  the  ton  are  the  daily  output  of  our  publishers, 
who  are  the  largest  in  the  country. 

If  these  things  do  not  mean  a  great  literary  centre, 
it  would  be  hard  to  say  what  does ;  and  I  am  not  going 
to  try  for  a  reason  against  such  facts.  It  is  not  qual 
ity  that  is  wanting,  but  perhaps  it  is  the  quantity  of 
the  quality ;  there  is  leaven,  but  not  for  so  large  a  lump. 
It  may  be  that  New  York  is  going  to  be  our  literary 
centre,  as  London  is  the  literary  centre  of  England, 
by  gathering  into  itself  all  our  writing  talent,  but  it 
has  by  no  means  done  this  yet.  What  we  can  say 
is  that  more  authors  come  here  from  the  West  and 
South  than  go  elsewhere ;  but  they  often  stay  at  home, 
and  I  fancy  very  wisely.  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris 
stays  at  Atlanta,  in  Georgia;  Mr.  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  stays  at  Indianapolis;  Mr.  Maurice  Thompson 
spent  his  whole  literary  life,  and  General  Lew.  Wallace 
still  lives  at  Crawfordsville,  Indiana;  Mr.  Madison 
Cawein  stays  at  Louisville,  Kentucky;  Miss  Murfree 
stays  at  St.  Louis,  Missouri;  Francis  R.  Stockton 
spent  the  greater  part  of  the  year  at  his  place  in  West 
Virginia,  and  came  only  for  the  winter  months  to  New 
York;  Mr.  Edward  Bellamy,  until  his  failing  health 
exiled  him  to  the  Far  West,  remained  at  Chicopee, 
Massachusetts;  and  I  cannot  think  of  one  of  these 
writers  whom  it  would  have  advantaged  in  any  lit 
erary  wise  to  dwell  in  New  York.  He  would  not  have 

183 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

found  greater  incentive  than  at  home ;  and  in  society 
he  would  not  have  found  that  literary  tone  which  all 
society  had,  or  wished  to  have,  in  Boston  when  Boston 
was  a  great  town  and  not  yet  a  big  town. 

In  fact,  I  doubt  if  anywhere  in  the  world  there  was 
ever  so  much  taste  and  feeling  for  literature  as  there 
was  in  that  Boston.  At  Edinburgh  (as  I  imagine  it) 
there  was  a  large  and  distinguished  literary  class, 
and  at  Weimar  there  was  a  cultivated  court  circle; 
but  in  Boston  there  was  not  only  such  a  group  of 
authors  as  we  shall  hardly  see  here  again  for  hundreds 
of  years,  but  there  was  such  regard  for  them  and  their 
calling,  not  only  in  good  society,  but  among  the  ex 
tremely  well-read  people  of  the  whole  intelligent  city, 
as  hardly  another  community  has  shown.  New  York, 
I  am  quite  sure,  never  was  such  a  centre,  and  I  see 
no  signs  that  it  ever  will  be.  It  does  not  influence 
the  literature  of  the  whole  country  as  Boston  once  did 
through  writers  whom  all  the  young  writers  wished 
to  resemble;  it  does  not  give  the  law,  and  it  does  not 
inspire  the  love  that  literary  Boston  inspired.  There 
is  no  ideal  that  it  represents. 

A  glance  at  the  map  of  the  Union  will  show  how 
very  widely  our  smaller  literary  centres  are  scattered; 
and  perhaps  it  will  be  useful  in  following  me  to  other 
more  populous  literary  centres.  Dropping  southward 
from  New  York,  now,  we  find  ourselves  in  a  literary 
centre  of  importance  at  Philadelphia,  since  that  is  the 
home  of  Mr.  J.  B.  McMasters,  the  historian  of  the 
American  people;  of  Mr.  Owen  Wister,  whose  fresh 
and  vigorous  work  I  have  mentioned;  and  of  Dr.  Weir 
Mitchell,  a  novelist  of  power  long  known  to  the  better 
public,  and  now  recognized  by  the  larger  in  the  im 
mense  success  of  his  historical  romance,  Hugh  Wynne. 

If  I  skip  Baltimore,  I  may  ignore  a  literary  centre 
of  great  promise,  but  while  I  do  not  forget  the  excel- 

184 


AMERICAN    LITERARY   CENTRES 

lent  work  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  in  training 
men  for  the  solider  literature  of  the  future,  no  Balti 
more  names  to  conjure  with  occur  to  me  at  the  mo 
ment  ;  and  we  must  really  get  on  to  Washington.  This, 
till  he  became  ambassador  at  the  Court  of  St.  James, 
was  the  home  of  Mr.  John  Hay,  a  poet  whose  biog 
raphy  of  Lincoln  must  rank  him  with  the  historians, 
and  whose  public  service  as  Secretary  of  State  classes 
him  high  among  statesmen.  He  blotted  out  one  lit 
erary  centre  at  Cleveland,  Ohio,  when  he  removed  to 
Washington,  and  Mr.  Thomas  Nelson  Page  another  at 
Richmond,  Virginia,  when  he  came  to  the  national 
capital.  Mr.  Paul  Dunbar,  the  first  negro  poet  to  di 
vine  and  utter  his  race,  carried  with  him  the  literary 
centre  of  Dayton,  Ohio,  when  he  came  to  be  an  em 
ploye  in  the  Congressional  Library;  and  Mr.  Charles 
Warren  Stoddard,  in  settling  at  Washington  as  Pro 
fessor  of  Literature  in  the  Catholic  University,  brought 
somewhat  indirectly  away  with  him  the  last  traces  of 
the  old  literary  centre  at  San  Francisco. 

A  more  recent  literary  centre  in  the  Californian 
metropolis  went  to  pieces  when  Mr.  Gelett  Burgess 
came  to  New  York  and  silenced  the  Lark,  a  bird  of 
as  new  and  rare  a  note  as  ever  made  itself  heard  in 
this  air;  but  since  he  has  returned  to  California,  there 
is  hope  that  the  literary  centre  may  form  itself  there 
again.  I  do  not  know  whether  Mrs.  Charlotte  Per 
kins  Stetson  wrecked  a  literary  centre  in  leaving  Los 
Angeles  or  not.  I  am  sure  only  that  she  has  enriched 
the  literary  centre  of  New  York  by  the  addition  of  a 
talent  in  sociological  satire  which  would  be  extraordi 
nary  even  if  it  were  not  altogether  unrivalled  among  us. 

Could  one  say  too  much  of  the  literary  centre  at 
Chicago?  I  fancy,  yes;  or  too  much,  at  least,  for  the 
taste  of  the  notable  people  who  constitute  it.  In  Mr. 
Henry  B.  Fuller  we  have  reason  to  hope,  from  what 

185 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

he  has  already  done,  an  American  novelist  of  such 
greatness  that  he  may  well  leave  being  the  great 
American  novelist  to  any  one  who  likes  taking  that 
r61e.  Mr.  Hamlin  Garland  is  another  writer  of  gen 
uine  and  original  gift  who  centres  at  Chicago;  and 
Mrs.  Mary  Catherwood  has  made  her  name  well  known 
in  romantic  fiction.  Miss  Edith  Wyatt  is  a  talent, 
newly  known,  of  the  finest  quality  in  minor  fiction; 
Mr.  Robert  Herrick,  Mr.  Will  Payne  in  their  novels, 
and  Mr.  George  Ade  and  Mr.  Peter  Dunn  in  their  sat 
ires  form  with  those  named  a  group  not  to  be  matched 
elsewhere  in  the  country.  It  would  be  hard  to  match 
among  our  critical  journals  the  Dial  of  Chicago;  and 
with  a  fair  amount  of  publishing  in  a  sort  of  books 
often  as  good  within  as  they  are  uncommonly  pretty 
without,  Chicago  has  a  claim  to  rank  with  our  first 
literary  centres. 

It  is  certainly  to  be  reckoned  not  so  very  far  below 
London,  which,  with  Mr.  Henry  James,  Mr.  Harry 
Harland,  and  Mr.  Bret  Harte,  seems  to  me  an  Ameri 
can  literary  centre  worthy  to  be  named  with  contem 
porary  Boston.  Which  is  our  chief  literary  centre, 
however,  I  am  not,  after  all,  ready  to  say.  When  I 
remember  Mr.  G.  W.  Cable,  at  Northampton,  Massa 
chusetts,  I  am  shaken  in  all  my  preoccupations ;  when 
I  think  of  Mark  Twain,  it  seems  to  me  that  our  great 
est  literary  centre  is  just  now  at  Riverdaie-on-the- 
Hudsort 


SAWDUST   IN   THE   ARENA 

IT  was  in  the  old  Roman  arena  of  beautiful  Verona 
that  the  circus  events  I  wish  to  speak  of  took  place; 
in  fact,  I  had  the  honor  and  profit  of  seeing  two  cir 
cuses  there.  Or,  strictly  speaking,  it  was  one  entire 
circus  that  I  saw,  and  the  unique  speciality  of  another, 
the  dying  glory  of  a  circus  on  its  last  legs,  the  trium 
phal  fall  of  a  circus  superb  in  adversity. 


The  entire  circus  was  altogether  Italian,  with  the 
exception  of  the  clowns,  who,  to  the  credit  of  our  na 
tion,  are  always  Americans,  or  advertised  as  such, 
in  Italy.  Its  chief  and  almost  absorbing  event  was 
a  reproduction  of  the  tournament  which  had  then 
lately  been  held  at  Rome  in  celebration  of  Prince  Tom- 
maso's  coming  of  age,  and  for  a  copy  of  a  copy  it  was 
really  fine.  It  had  fitness  in  the  arena,  which  must 
have  witnessed  many  such  mediaeval  shows  in  their 
time,  and  I  am  sensible  still  of  the  pleasure  its  effects 
of  color  gave  me.  There  was  one  beautiful  woman, 
a  red  blonde  in  a  green  velvet  gown,  who  might  have 
ridden,  as  she  wras,  out  of  a  canvas  of  Titian's,  if  he 
had  ever  painted  equestrian  pictures,  and  who  at  any 
rate  was  an  excellent  Carpaccio.  Then,  the  Clowns 
Americani  were  very  amusing,  from  a  platform  de 
voted  solely  to  them,  and  it  was  a  source  of  pride  if 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

not  of  joy  with  me  to  think  that  we  were  almost  the 
only  people  present  who  understood  their  jokes.  In 
the  vast  oval  of  the  arena,  however,  the  circus  ring 
looked  very  little,  not  half  so  large,  say,  as  the  rim 
of  a  lady's  hat  in  front  of  you  at  the  play;  and  on 
the  gradines  of  the  ancient  amphitheatre  we  were  all 
such  a  great  way  off  that  a  good  field -glass  would 
have  been  needed  to  distinguish  the  features  of  the 
actors.  I  could  not  make  out,  therefore,  whether  the 
Clowns  Americani  had  the  national  expression  or 
not,  but  one  of  them,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  spoke  the 
United  States  language  with  a  cockney  accent.  I 
suspect  that  he  was  an  Englishman  who  had  passed 
himself  off  upon  the  Italian  management  as  a  true 
Yankee,  and  who  had  formed  himself  upon  our  school 
of  clowning,  just  as  some  of  the  recent  English  hu 
morists  have  patterned  after  certain  famous  wits  of  ours. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  would  have  exposed  this  impos 
tor,  even  if  occasion  had  offered,  for,  after  all,  his  fraud 
was  a  tribute  to  our  own  primacy  in  clowning,  and  the 
Veronese  were  none  the  worse  for  his  erring  aspirates. 
The  audience  was  for  me  the  best  part  of  the  spec 
tacle,  as  the  audience  always  is  in  Italy,  and  I  indulged 
my  fancy  in  some  cheap  excursions  concerning  the 
place  and  people.  I  reflected  that  it  was  the  same 
race  essentially  as  that  which  used  to  watch  the  glad 
iatorial  shows  in  that  arena  when  it  was  new,  and  that 
very  possibly  there  were  among  these  spectators  per 
sons  of  the  same  blood  as  those  Veronese  patricians 
who  had  left  their  names  carved  on  the  front  of  the 
gradines  in  places,  to  claim  this  or  that  seat  for  their 
own.  In  fact,  there  was  so  little  difference,  probably, 
in  their  qualities,  from  that  time  to  this,  that  I  felt  the 
process  of  the  generations  to  be  a  sort  of  impertinence ; 
and  if  Nature  had  been  present,  I  might  very  well 
have  asked  her  why,  when  she  had  once  arrived  at  a 

188 


SAWDUST   IN   THE   ARENA 

given  expression  of  humanity,  she  must  go  on  repeat 
ing  it  indefinitely?  How  were  all  those  similar  souls 
to  know  themselves  apart  in  their  common  eternity? 
Merely  to  have  been  differently  circumstanced  in  time 
did  not  seem  enough;  and  I  think  Nature  would  have 
been  puzzled  to  answer  me.  But  perhaps  not ;  she  may 
have  had  her  reasons,  as  that  you  cannot  have  too 
much  of  a  good  thing,  and  that  when  the  type  was  so 
fine  in  most  respects  as  the  Italian  you  could  not  do 
better  than  go  on  repeating  impressions  from  it. 

Certainly  I  myself  could  have  wished  no  variation 
from  it  in  the  young  officer  of  bersaglieri,  who  had 
come  down  from  antiquity  to  the  topmost  gradine  of 
the  arena  over  against  me,  and  stood  there  defined 
against  the  clear  evening  sky,  one  hand  on  his  hip, 
and  the  other  at  his  side,  while  his  thin  cockerel  plumes 
streamed  in  the  light  wind.  I  have  since  wondered 
if  he  knew  how  beautiful  he  was,  and  I  am  sure  that, 
if  he  did  not,  all  the  women  there  did,  and  that  was 
doubtless  enough  for  the  young  officer  of  bersaglieri. 


II 

I  think  that  he  was  preliminary  to  the  sole  event  of 
that  partial  circus  I  have  mentioned.  This  event  was 
one  that  I  have  often  witnessed  elsewhere,  but  never 
in  such  noble  and  worthy  keeping.  The  top  of  the 
outer  arena  wall  must  itself  be  fifty  feet  high,  and  the 
pole  in  the  centre  of  its  oval  seemed  to  rise  fifty  feet 
higher  yet.  At  its  base  an  immense  net  was  stretched, 
and  a  man  in  a  Prince  Albert  coat  and  a  derby  hat 
was  figuring  about,  anxiously  directing  the  work 
men  who  were  fixing  the  guy-ropes,  and  testing  every 
particular  of  the  preparation  with  his  own  hands. 
While  this  went  on,  a  young  girl  ran  out  into  the  arena, 

189 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

and,  after  a  bow  to  the  spectators,  quickly  mounted  to 
the  top  of  the  pole,  where  she  presently  stood  in  stat 
uesque  beauty  that  took  all  eyes  even  from  the  love 
liness  of  the  officer  of  bersaglieri.  Then  the  man  in 
the  Prince  Albert  coat  and  the  derby  hat  stepped  back 
from  the  net  and  looked  up  at  her. 

She  called  down,  in  English  that  sounded  like  some 
delocalized,  denaturalized  speech,  it  was  so  strange 
then  and  there,  "Is  it  all  right?" 

He  shouted  back  in  the  same  alienated  tongue, 
"Yes;  keep  to  the  left,"  and  she  dived  straight  down 
ward  in  the  long  plunge,  till,  just  before  she  reached 
the  net,  she  turned  a  quick  somersault  into  its  elastic 
mesh. 

It  was  all  so  exquisitely  graceful  that  one  forgot 
how  wickedly  dangerous  it  was;  but  I  think  that  the 
brief  English  colloquy  was  the  great  wonder  of  the 
event  for  me,  and  I  doubt  if  I  could  ever  have  been 
perfectly  happy  again,  if  chance  had  not  amiably 
suffered  me  to  satisfy  my  curiosity  concerning  the 
speakers.  A  few  evenings  after  that,  I  was  at  that 
copy  of  a  copy  of  a  tournament,  and,  a  few  gradines 
below  me,  I  saw  the  man  of  the  Prince  Albert  coat  and 
the  derby  hat.  I  had  already  made  up  my  mind  that 
he  was  an  American,  for  I  supposed  that  an  English 
man  would  rather  perish  than  wear  such  a  coat  with 
such  a  hat,  and  as  I  had  wished  all  my  life  to  speak 
to  a  circus-man,  I  went  down  and  boldly  accosted 
him.  "Are  you  a  brother  Yankee?"  I  asked,  and 
he  laughed,  and  confessed  that  he  was  an  English 
man,  but  he  said  he  was  glad  to  meet  any  one  who 
spoke  English,  and  he  made  a  place  for  me  by  his  side. 
He  was  very  willing  to  tell  how  he  happened  to  be 
there,  and  he  explained  that  he  was  the  manager  of 
a  circus,  which  had  been  playing  to  very  good  business 
all  winter  in  Spain.  In  an  evil  hour  he  decided  to 

190 


SAWDUST   IN  THE  ARENA 

come  to  Italy,  but  he  found  the  prices  so  ruinously 
low  that  he  was  forced  to  disband  his  company.  This 
diving-girl  was  all  that  remained  to  him  of  its  many 
attractions,  and  he  was  trying  to  make  a  living  for 
both  in  a  country  where  the  admission  to  a  circus  was 
six  of  our  cents,  with  fifty  for  a  reserved  seat.  But 
he  was  about  to  give  it  up  and  come  to  America,  where 
he  said  Barnum  had  offered  him  an  engagement.  I 
hope  he  found  it  profitable,  and  is  long  since  an  Amer 
ican  citizen,  with  as  good  right  as  any  of  us  to  wear  a 
Prince  Albert  coat  with  a  derby  hat. 


Ill 

There  used  to  be  very  good  circuses  in  Venice,  where 
many  Venetians  had  the  only  opportunity  of  their 
lives  to  see  a  horse.  The  horses  were  the  great  at 
traction  for  them,  and,  perhaps  in  concession  to  their 
habitual  destitution  in  this  respect,  the  riding  was 
providentially  very  good.  It  was  so  good  that  it  did 
not  bore  me,  as  circus-riding  mostly  does,  especially 
that  of  the  silk-clad  jockey  who  stands  in  his  high 
boots,  on  his  backbared  horse,  and  ends  by  waving  an 
American  flag  in  triumph  at  having  been  so  tiresome. 

I  am  at  a  loss  to  know  why  they  make  such  an  ado 
about  the  lady  who  jumps  through  paper  hoops,  which 
have  first  had  holes  poked  in  them  to  render  her  tran 
sit  easy,  or  why  it  should  be  thought  such  a  merit  in 
her  to  hop  over  a  succession  of  banners  which  are 
swept  under  her  feet  in  a  manner  to  minify  her  exer 
tion  almost  to  nothing,  but  I  observe  it  is  so  at  all  cir 
cuses.  At  my  first  Venetian  circus,  which  was  on  a 
broad  expanse  of  the  Riva  degli  Schiavoni,  there  was 
a  girl  who  flung  herself  to  the  ground  and  back  to  her 
horse  again,  holding  by  his  mane  with  one  hand, 

191 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

quite  like  the  goddess  out  of  the  bath-gown  at  my 
village  circus  the  other  day;  and  apparently  there 
are  more  circuses  in  the  world  than  circus  events.  It 
must  be  as  hard  to  think  up  anything  new  in  that 
kind  as  in  romanticistic  fiction,  which  circus  -  acting 
otherwise  largely  resembles. 

At  a  circus  which  played  all  one  winter  in  Florence 
I  saw  for  the  first  time — outside  of  polite  society — the 
clown  in  evening  dress,  who  now  seems  essential  to 
all  circuses  of  metropolitan  pretensions,  and  whom  I 
missed  so  gladly  at  my  village  circus.  He  is  nearly  as 
futile  as  the  lady  clown,  who  is  one  of  the  saddest  and 
strangest  developments  of  New  Womanhood. 

Of  the  clowns  who  do  not  speak,  I  believe  I  like  most 
the  clown  who  catches  a  succession  of  peak-crowned 
soft  hats  on  his  head,  when  thrown  across  the  ring  by 
an  accomplice.  This  is  a  very  pretty  sight  always, 
arid  at  the  Hippodrome  in  Paris  I  once  saw  a  gifted 
creature  take  his  stand  high  up  on  the  benches  among 
the  audience  and  catch  these  hats  on  his  head  from  a 
flight  of  a  hundred  feet  through  the  air.  This  made 
me  proud  of  human  nature,  which  is  often  so  humili 
ating;  and  altogether  I  do  not  think  that  after  a  real 
country  circus  there  are  many  better  things  in  life 
than  the  Hippodrome.  It  had  a  state,  a  dignity,  a 
smoothness,  a  polish,  which  I  should  not  know  where 
to  match,  and  when  the  superb  coach  drove  into  the 
ring  to  convey  the  lady  performers  to  the  scene  of 
their  events,  there  was  a  majesty  in  the  effect  which 
I  doubt  if  courts  have  the  power  to  rival.  Still,  it 
should  be  remembered  that  I  have  never  been  at  court, 
and  speak  from  a  knowledge  of  the  Hippodrome  only. 


AT  A   DIME   MUSEUM 

I  SEE/'  said  my  friend,  "  that  you  have  been  writ 
ing  a   good  deal  about  the   theatre  during   the 
past  winter.     You  have  been  attacking  its  high  hats 
and  its  high  prices,  and  its  low  morals;  and  I  suppose 
that  you  think  you  have  done  good,  as  people  call  it." 


This  seemed  like  a  challenge  of  some  sort,  and  I 
prepared  myself  to  take  it  up  warily.  I  said  I  should 
be  very  sorry  to  do  good,  as  people  called  it;  because 
such  a  line  of  action  nearly  always  ended  in  spiritual 
pride  for  the  doer  and  general  demoralization  for  the 
doee.  Still,  I  said,  a  law  had  lately  been  passed  in 
Ohio  giving  a  man  who  found  himself  behind  a  high 
hat  at  the  theatre  a  claim  for  damages  against  the 
manager ;  and  if  the  passage  of  this  law  could  be  traced 
ever  so  faintly  and  indirectly  to  my  teachings,  I  should 
not  altogether  grieve  for  the  good  I  had  done.  I  added 
that  if  all  the  States  should  pass  such  a  law,  and  other 
laws  fixing  a  low  price  for  a  certain  number  of  seats 
at  the  theatres,  or  obliging  the  managers  to  give  one 
free  performance  every  month,  as  the  law  does  in  Paris, 
and  should  then  forbid  indecent  and  immoral  plays — 

"I  see  what  you  mean/'  said  my  friend,  a  little  im 
patiently.  "You  mean  sumptuary  legislation.  But 
I  have  not  come  to  talk  to  you  upon  that  subject,  for 
13  193 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

then  you  would  probably  want  to  do  all  the  talking 
yourself.  I  want  to  ask  you  if  you  have  visited  any 
of  the  cheaper  amusements  of  this  metropolis,  or  know 
anything  of  the  really  clever  and  charming  things 
one  may  see  there  for  a  very  little  money/' 

"Ten  cents,  for  instance?" 

"Yes." 

I  answered  that  I  would  never  own  to  having  come 
as  low  down  as  that;  and  I  expressed  a  hardy  and 
somewhat  inconsistent  doubt  of  the  quality  of  the 
amusement  that  could  be  had  for  that  money.  I  ques 
tioned  if  anything  intellectual  could  be  had  for  it. 

"What  do  you  say  to  the  ten-cent  magazines?"  my 
friend  retorted.  "And  do  you  pretend  that  the  two- 
dollar  drama  is  intellectual?" 

I  had  to  confess  that  it  generally  was  not,  and  that 
this  was  part  of  my  grief  with  it. 

Then  he  said :  "  I  don't  contend  that  it  is  intellect 
ual,  but  I  say  that  it  is  often  clever  and  charming  at 
the  ten-cent  shows,  just  as  it  is  less  often  clever  and 
charming  in  the  ten-cent  magazines.  I  think  the  aver 
age  of  propriety  is  rather  higher  than  it  is  at  the  two- 
dollar  theatres ;  and  it  is  much  more  instructive  at  the 
ten-cent  shows,  if  you  come  to  that.  The  other  day," 
said  my  friend,  and  in  squaring  himself  comfortably 
in  his  chair  and  finding  room  for  his  elbow  on  the  cor 
ner  of  my  table  he  knocked  off  some  books  for  review, 
"I  went  to  a  dime  museum  for  an  hour  that  I  had  be 
tween  two  appointments,  and  I  must  say  that  I  never 
passed  an  hour's  time  more  agreeably.  In  the  curio 
hall,  as  one  of  the  lecturers  on  the  curios  called  it — 
they  had  several  lecturers  in  white  wigs  and  scholars' 
caps  and  gowns — there  was  not  a  great  deal  to  see,  I 
confess;  but  everything  was  very  high-class.  There 
was  the  inventor  of  a  perpetual  motion,  who  lectured 
upon  it  and  explained  it  from  a  diagram.  There  was 

194 


AT  A  DIME  MUSEUM 

a  fortune-teller  in  a  three-foot  tent  whom  I  did  not 
interview;  there  were  five  macaws  in  one  cage,  and 
two  gloomy  apes  in  another.  On  a  platform  at  the 
end  of  the  hall  was  an  Australian  family  a  good  deal 
gloomier  than  the  apes,  who  sat  in  the  costume  of  our 
latitude,  staring  down  the  room  with  varying  expres 
sions  all  verging  upon  melancholy  madness,  and  who 
gave  me  such  a  pang  of  compassion  as  I  have  seldom 
got  from  the  tragedy  of  the  two-dollar  theatres.  They 
allowed  me  to  come  quite  close  up  to  them,  and  to  feed 
my  pity  upon  their  wild  dejection  in  exile  without 
stint.  I  couldn't  enter  into  conversation  with  them, 
and  express  my  regret  at  finding  them  so  far  from 
their  native  boomerangs  and  kangaroos  and  pine- 
tree  grubs,  but  I  know  they  felt  my  sympathy,  it  was 
so  evident.  I  didn't  see  their  performance,  and  I  don't 
know  that  they  had  any.  They  may  simply  have 
been  there  ethnologically,  but  this  was  a  good  object, 
and  the  sight  of  their  spiritual  misery  was  alone  worth 
the  price  of  admission. 

"After  the  inventor  of  the  perpetual  motion  had 
brought  his  harangue  to  a  close,  we  all  went  round 
to  the  dais  where  a  lady  in  blue  spectacles  lectured 
us  upon  a  fire-escape  which  she  had  invented,  and 
operated  a  small  model  of  it.  None  of  the  events  were 
so  exciting  that  we  could  regret  it  when  the  chief 
lecturer  announced  that  this  was  the  end  of  the  en 
tertainment  in  the  curio  hall,  and  that  now  the  per 
formance  in  the  theatre  was  about  to  begin.  He  in 
vited  us  to  buy  tickets  at  an  additional  charge  of  five, 
ten,  or  fifteen  cents  for  the  gallery,  orchestra  circle, 
or  orchestra. 

"I  thought  I  could  afford  an  orchestra  stall,  for 
once.  We  were  three  in  the  orchestra,  another  man 
and  a  young  mother,  not  counting  the  little  boy  she 
had  with  her;  there  were  two  people  in  the  gallery, 

195 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

and  a  dozen  at  least  in  the  orchestra  circle.  An  at 
tendant  shouted,  'Hats  off!'  and  the  other  man  and 
I  uncovered,  and  a  lady  came  up  from  under  the  stage 
and  began  to  play  the  piano  in  front  of  it.  The  cur 
tain  rose,  and  the  entertainment  began  at  once.  It 
was  a  passage  apparently  from  real  life,  and  it  in 
volved  a  dissatisfied  boarder  and  the  daughter  of  the 
landlady.  There  was  not  much  coherence  in  it,  but 
there  was  a  good  deal  of  conscience  on  the  part  of  the 
actors,  who  toiled  through  it  with  unflagging  energy. 
The  young  woman  was  equipped  for  the  dance  she 
brought  into  it  at  one  point  rather  than  for  the  part 
she  had  to  sustain  in  the  drama.  It  was  a  very  blame 
less  dance,  and  she  gave  it  as  if  she  was  tired  of  it, 
but  was  not  going  to  falter.  She  delivered  her  lines 
with  a  hard,  Southwestern  accent,  and  I  liked  fancy 
ing  her  having  come  up  in  a  simpler-hearted  section 
of  the  country  than  ours,  encouraged  by  a  strong  local 
belief  that  she  was  destined  to  do  Juliet  and  Lady 
Macbeth,  or  Peg  Woffington  at  the  least;  but  very 
likely  she  had  not. 

"Her  performance  was  followed  by  an  event  in 
volving  a  single  character.  The  actor,  naturally,  was 
blackened  as  to  his  skin,  but  as  to  his  dress  he  was 
all  in  white,  and  at  the  first  glance  I  could  see  that  he 
had  temperament.  I  suspect  that  he  thought  I  had, 
too,  for  he  began  to  address  his  entire  drama  to  me. 
This  was  not  surprising,  for  it  would  not  have  been 
the  thing  for  him  to  single  out  the  young  mother; 
and  the  other  man  in  the  orchestra  stalls  seemed  a 
vague  and  inexperienced  youth,  whom  he  would  hard 
ly  have  given  the  preference  over  me.  I  felt  the  com 
pliment,  but  upon  the  whole  it  embarrassed  me ;  it  was 
too  intimate,  and  it  gave  me  a  publicity  I  would  will 
ingly  have  foregone.  I  did  what  I  could  to  reject  it, 
by  feigning  an  indifference  to  his  jokes;  I  even  frowned 

196 


AT  A    DIME   MUSEUM 

a  measure  of  disapproval;  but  this  merely  stimulated 
his  ambition.  He  was  really  a  merry  creature,  and 
when  he  had  got  off  a  number  of  very  good  things 
which  were  received  in  perfect  silence,  and  looked  over 
his  audience  with  a  woe-begone  eye,  and  said,  with 
an  effect  of  delicate  apology,  'I  hope  I'm  not  disturb 
ing  you  any/  I  broke  down  and  laughed,  and  that 
delivered  me  into  his  hand.  He  immediately  said 
to  me  that  now  he  would  tell  me  about  a  friend  of  his, 
who  had  a  pretty  large  family,  eight  of  them  living, 
and  one  in  Philadelphia;  and  then  for  no  reason  he 
seemed  to  change  his  mind,  and  said  he  would  sing 
me  a  song  written  expressly  for  him — by  an  express 
man;  and  he  went  on  from  one  wild  gayety  to  an 
other,  until  he  had  worked  his  audience  up  to  quite  a 
frenzy  of  enthusiasm,  and  almost  had  a  recall  when 
he  went  off. 

"  I  was  rather  glad  to  be  rid  of  him,  and  I  was  glad 
that  the  next  performers,  who  were  a  lady  and  a  gen 
tleman  contortionist  of  Spanish- American  extraction, 
behaved  more  impartially.  They  were  really  remark 
able  artists  in  their  way,  and  though  it's  a  pain 
ful  way,  I  couldn't  help  admiring  their  gift  in  bow- 
knots  and  other  difficult  poses.  The  gentleman  got 
abundant  applause,  but  the  lady  at  first  got  none.  I 
think  perhaps  it  was  because,  with  the  correct  feeling 
that  prevailed  among  us,  we  could  not  see  a  lady  con 
tort  herself  with  so  much  approval  as  a  gentleman, 
and  that  there  was  a  wound  to  our  sense  of  propriety 
in  witnessing  her  skill.  But  I  could  see  that  the  poor 
girl  was  hurt  in  her  artist  pride  by  our  severity,  and 
at  the  next  thing  she  did  I  led  off  the  applause  with 
my  umbrella.  She  instantly  lighted  up  with  a  joy 
ful  smile,  and  the  young  mother  in  the  orchestra  leaned 
forward  to  nod  her  sympathy  to  me  while  she  clapped. 
We  were  fast  becoming  a  domestic  circle,  and  it  was 

197 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

very  pleasant,  but  I  thought  that  upon  the  whole  I 
had  better  go." 

"And  do  you  think  you  had  a  profitable  hour  at 
that  show?"  I  asked,  with  a  smile  that  was  meant  to 
be  sceptical. 

"Profitable?"  said  my  friend.  "I  said  agreeable. 
I  don't  know  about  the  profit.  But  it  was  very  good 
variety,  and  it  was  very  cheap.  I  understand  that 
this  is  the  kind  of  thing  you  want  the  two-dollar  the 
atre  to  come  down  to,  or  up  to." 

"Not  exactly,  or  not  quite,"  I  returned,  thought 
fully,  "though  I  must  say  I  think  your  time  was  as 
well  spent  as  it  would  have  been  at  most  of  the  plays 
I  have  seen  this  winter." 

My  friend  left  the  point,  and  said,  with  a  dreamy 
air:  "It  was  all  very  pathetic,  in  a  way.  Three  out 
of  those  five  people  were  really  clever,  and  certainly 
artists.  That  colored  brother  was  almost  a  genius, 
a  very  common  variety  of  genius,  but  still  a  genius, 
with  a  gift  for  his  calling  that  couldn't  be  disputed. 
He  was  a  genuine  humorist,  and  I  sorrowed  over  him 
— after  I  got  safely  away  from  his  intimacy — as  I 
should  over  some  author  who  was  struggling  along 
without  winning  his  public.  Why  not?  One  is  as 
much  in  the  show  business  as  the  other.  There  is 
a  difference  of  quality  rather  than  of  kind.  Perhaps 
by-and-by  my  colored  humorist  will  make  a  strike 
with  his  branch  of  the  public,  as  you  are  always  hop 
ing  to  do  with  yours." 

"You  don't  think  you're  making  yourself  rather 
offensive?"  I  suggested. 

"Not  intentionally.  Aren't  the  arts  one?  How 
can  you  say  that  any  art  is  higher  than  the  others? 
Why  is  it  nobler  to  contort  the  mind  than  to  contort 
the  body?" 

"I  am  always  saying  that  it  is  not  at  all  noble  to 


AT   A   DIME   MUf^EU.Vl 

contort  the  mind/'  I  returned,  "and  I  feel  that  to  aim 
at  nothing  higher  than  the  amusement  of  3'our  readers 
is  to  bring  yourself  most  distinctly  to  the  level  of  the 
show  business/' 

"Yes,  I  know  that  is  your  pose,"  said  my  friend. 
"  And  I  dare  say  you  really  think  that  you  make  a 
distinction  in  facts  when  you  make  a  distinction  in 
terms.  If  you  don't  amuse  your  readers,  you  don't 
keep  them;  practically,  you  cease  to  exist.  You  may 
call  it  interesting  them,  if  you  like;  but,  really,  what 
is  the  difference?  You  do  your  little  act,  and  because 
the  stage  is  large  and  the  house  is  fine,  you  fancy  you 
are  not  of  that  sad  brotherhood  which  aims  to  please 
in  humbler  places,  with  perhaps  cruder  means — " 

"I  don't  know  whether  I  like  your  saws  less  than 
your  instances,  or  your  instances  less  than  your  saws," 
I  broke  in.  "Have  you  been  at  the  circus  yet?" 


II 

"Yet?"  demanded  my  friend.  "I  went  the  first 
night,  and  I  have  been  a  good  deal  interested  in  the 
examination  of  my  emotions  ever  since.  I  can't  find 
out  just  why  I  have  so  much  pleasure  in  the  trapeze. 
Half  the  time  I  want  to  shut  my  eyes,  and  a  good  part 
of  the  time  I  do  look  away;  but  I  wouldn't  spare  any 
actor  the  most  dangerous  feat.  One  of  the  poor  girls, 
that  night,  dropped  awkwardly  into  the  net  after  her 
performance,  and  limped  off  to  the  dressing-room  with 
a  sprained  ankle.  It  made  me  rather  sad  to  think  that 
now  she  must  perhaps  give  up  her  perilous  work  for 
a  while,  and  pay  a  doctor,  and  lose  her  salary,  but 
it  didn't  take  away  my  interest  in  the  other  trapezists 
flying  through  the  air  above  another  net. 

"If  I  had  honestly  complained  of  anything  it  would 
199 


LIVES  ATURE   AND   LIFE 

have  been  of  the  superfluity  which  glutted  rather  than 
fed  me.  How  can  you  watch  three  sets  of  trapezists 
at  once?  You  really  see  neither  well.  It's  the  same 
with  the  three  rings.  There  should  be  one  ring,  and 
each  act  should  have  a  fair  chance  with  the  spectator, 
if  it  took  six  hours;  I  would  willingly  give  the  time. 
Fancy  three  stages  at  the  theatre,  with  three  plays 
going  on  at  once!" 

"No,  don't  fancy  that!"  I  entreated.  "One  play  is 
bad  enough." 

"Or  fancy  reading  three  novels  simultaneously, 
and  listening  at  the  same  time  to  a  lecture  and  a  ser 
mon,  which  could  represent  the  two  platforms  between 
the  rings,"  my  friend  calmly  persisted.  "The  three 
rings  are  an  abuse  and  an  outrage,  but  I  don't  know 
but  I  object  still  more  to  the  silencing  of  the  clowns. 
They  have  a  great  many  clowns  now,  but  they  are 
all  dumb,  and  you  only  get  half  the  good  you  used  to 
get  out  of  the  single  clown  of  the  old  one-ring  circus. 
Why,  it's  as  if  the  literary  humorist  were  to  lead  up 
to  a  charming  conceit  or  a  subtle  jest,  and  then  put 
asterisks  where  the  humor  ought  to  come  in." 

"  Don't  you  think  you  are  going  from  bad  to  worse?" 
I  asked. 

My  friend  went  on:  "I'm  afraid  the  circus  is  spoiled 
for  me.  It  has  become  too  much  of  a  good  thing;  for 
it  is  a  good  thing ;  almost  the  best  thing  in  the  way  of 
an  entertainment  that  there  is.  I'm  still  very  fond 
of  it,  but  I  come  away  defeated  and  defrauded  because 
I  have  been  embarrassed  with  riches,  and  have  been 
given  more  than  I  was  able  to  grasp.  My  greed  has 
been  overfed.  I  think  I  must  keep  to  those  entertain 
ments  where  you  can  come  at  ten  in  the  morning  and 
stay  till  ten  at  night,  with  a  perpetual  change  of  bill, 
only  one  stage,  and  no  fall  of  the  curtain.  I  suppose 
you  would  object  to  them  because  they're  getting  rather 

200 


AT   A    DIME   MUSEUM 

dear;  at  the  best  of  them  now  they  ask  you  a  dollar 
for  the  first  seats/' 

I  said  that  I  did  not  think  this  too  much  for  twelve 
hours,  if  the  intellectual  character  of  the  entertain 
ment  was  correspondingly  high. 

''It's  as  high  as  that  of  some  magazines/'  said  my 
friend,  "  though  I  could  sometimes  wish  it  were  higher. 
It's  like  the  matter  in  the  Sunday  papers — about  that 
average.  Some  of  it's  good,  and  most  of  it  isn't.  Some 
of  it  could  hardly  be  worse.  But  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  it,  and  you  get  it  consecutively  and  not  simultane 
ously.  That  constitutes  its  advantage  over  the  cir 
cus." 

My  friend  stopped,  with  a  vague  smile,  and  I  asked : 
"Then,  do  I  understand  that  you  would  advise  me 
to  recommend  the  dime  museums,  the  circus,  and 
the  perpetual-motion  varieties  in  the  place  of  the  the 
atres?" 

"You  have  recommended  books  instead,  and  that 
notion  doesn't  seem  to  have  met  with  much  favor, 
though  you  urged  their  comparative  cheapness.  Now, 
why  not  suggest  something  that  is  really  level  with 
the  popular  taste?" 


AMERICAN   LITERATURE   IN   EXILE 

A  RECENTLY  lecturing  Englishman  is  reported 
to  have  noted  the  unenviable  primacy  of  the 
United  States  among  countries  where  the  struggle 
,for  material  prosperity  has  been  disastrous  to  the  pur- 
'suit  of  literature.  He  said,  or  is  said  to  have  said 
(one  cannot  be  too  careful  in  attributing  to  a  public 
man  the  thoughts  that  may  be  really  due  to  an  im 
aginative  frame  in  the  reporter),  that  among  us,  "the 
old  race  of  writers  of  distinction,  such  as  Longfellow, 
Bryant,  Holmes,  and  Washington  Irving,  have  (sic) 
died  out,  and  the  Americans  who  are  most  prominent 
in  cultivated  European  opinion  in  art  or  literature, 
like  Sargent,  Henry  James,  or  Marion  Crawford,  live 
habitually  out  of  America,  and  draw  their  inspiration 
from  England,  France,  and  Italy/' 


If  this  were  true,  I  confess  that  I  am  so  indifferent 
to  what  many  Americans  glory  in  that  it  would  not 
distress  me,  or  wound  me  in  the  sort  of  self-love  which 
calls  itself  patriotism.  If  it  would  at  all  help  to  put 
an  end  to  that  struggle  for  material  prosperity  which 
has  eventuated  with  us  in  so  many  millionaires  and 
so  many  tramps,  I  should  be  glad  to  believe  that  it  was 
driving  our  literary  men  out  of  the  county.  This 
would  be  a  tremendous  object-lesson,  and  might  be  a 

202 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE   IN   EXILE 

warning  to  the  millionaires  and  the  tramps.  But  I 
am  afraid  it  would  not  have  this  effect,  for  neither 
our  very  rich  nor  our  very  poor  care  at  all  for  the  state 
of  polite  learning  among  us;  though  for  the  matter 
of  that,  I  believe  that  economic  conditions  have  little 
to  do  with  it;  and  that  if  a  general  mediocrity  of  fort 
une  prevailed  and  there  were  no  haste  to  be  rich  and 
to  get  poor,  the  state  of  polite  learning  would  not  be 
considerably  affected.  As  matters  stand,  I  think  we 
may  reasonably  ask  whether  the  Americans  "most 
prominent  in  cultivated  European  opinion/'  the  Amer 
icans  who  "live  habitually  out  of  America/'  are  not 
less  exiles  than  advance  agents  of  the  expansion  now 
advertising  itself  to  the  world.  They  may  be  the 
vanguard  of  the  great  army  of  adventurers  destined 
to  overrun  the  earth  from  these  shores,  and  exploit 
all  foreign  countries  to  our  advantage.  They  proba 
bly  themselves  do  not  know  it,  but  in  the  act  of  "  draw 
ing  their  inspiration"  from  alien  scenes,  or  taking 
their  own  where  they  find  it,  are  not  they  simply  trans 
porting  to  Europe  "  the  struggle  for  material  prosper 
ity  "  which  Sir  Lepel  supposes  to  be  fatal  to  them  here? 
There  is  a  question,  however,  which  comes  before 
this,  and  that  is  the  question  whether  they  have  quitted 
us  in  such  numbers  as  justly  to  alarm  our  patriotism. 
Qualitatively,  in  the  authors  named  and  in  the  late  Mr. 
Bret  Harte,  Mr.  Harry  Harland,  and  the  late  Mr.  Harold 
Frederic,  as  well  as  in  Mark  Twain,  once  temporarily 
resident  abroad,  the  defection  is  very  great ;  but  quan 
titatively  it  is  not  such  as  to  leave  us  without  a  fair 
measure  of  home-keeping  authorship.  Our  destitution 
is  not  nearly  so  great  now  in  the  absence  of  Mr.  James 
and  Mr.  Crawford  as  it  was  in  the  times  before  the 
"struggle  for  material  prosperity"  when  Washington 
Irving  went  and  lived  in  England  and  on  the  Euro 
pean  continent  wellnigh  half  his  life. 

203 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

Sir  Lepel  Griffin — or  Sir  Lepel  Griffin's  reporter — 
seems  to  forget  the  fact  of  Irving's  long  absenteeism 
when  he  classes  him  with  "the  old  race"  of  eminent 
American  authors  who  stayed  at  home.  But  really 
none  of  those  he  names  were  so  constant  to  our  air  as 
he  seems — or  his  reporter  seems — to  think.  Longfellow 
sojourned  three  or  four  years  in  Germany,  Spain,  and 
Italy;  Holmes  spent  as  great  time  in  Paris;  Bryant 
was  a  frequent  traveller,  and  each  of  them  "drew  his 
inspiration  "  now  and  then  from  alien  sources.  Lowell 
was  many  years  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  England;  Mot 
ley  spent  more  than  half  his  life  abroad;  Hawthorne 
was  away  from  us  nearly  a  decade. 


II 

If  I  seem  to  be  proving  too  much  in  one  way,  I  do 
not  feel  that  I  am  proving  too  much  in  another.  My 
facts  go  to  show  that  the  literary  spirit  is  the  true  world- 
citizen,  and  is  at  home  everywhere.  If  any  good  Amer 
ican  were  distressed  by  the  absenteeism  of  our  authors, 
I  should  first  advise  him  that  American  literature  was 
not  derived  from  the  folk-lore  of  the  red  Indians,  but 
was,  as  I  have  said  once  before,  a  condition  of  English 
literature,  and  was  independent  even  of  our  indepen 
dence.  Then  I  should  entreat  him  to  consider  the  case 
of  foreign  authors  who  had  found  it  more  comfortable 
or  more  profitable  to  live  out  of  their  respective  coun 
tries  than  in  them.  I  should  allege  for  his  consolation 
the  case  of  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  more 
latterly  that  of  the  Brownings  and  Walter  Savage 
Landor,  who  preferred  an  Italian  to  an  English  so 
journ;  and  yet  more  recently  that  of  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling,  who  voluntarily  lived  several  years  in  Ver 
mont,  and  has  "drawn  his  inspiration"  in  notable 

204 


AMERICAN   LITERATURE   IN    EXILE 

instances  from  the  life  of  these  States.  It  will  serve 
him  also  to  consider  that  the  two  greatest  Norwegian 
authors,  Bjornsen  and  Ibsen,  have  both  lived  long  in 
France  and  Italy.  Heinrich  Heine  loved  to  live  in 
Paris  much  better  than  in  Dusseldorf,  or  even  in  Ham 
burg;  and  Tourgue"nief  himself,  who  said  that  any 
man's  country  could  get  on  without  him,  but  no  man 
could  get  on  without  his  country,  managed  to  dis 
pense  with  his  own  in  the  French  capital,  and  died 
there  after  he  was  quite  free  to  go  back  to  St.  Peters 
burg.  In  the  last  century  Rousseau  lived  in  France 
rather  than  Switzerland;  Voltaire  at  least  tried  to  live 
in  Prussia,  and  was  obliged  to  a  long  exile  elsewhere ; 
Goldoni  left  fame  and  friends  in  Venice  for  the  favor 
of  princes  in  Paris. 

Literary  absenteeism,  it  seems  to  me,  is  not  pecul 
iarly  an  American  vice  or  an  American  virtue.  It  is 
an  expression  and  a  proof  of  the  modern  sense  which 
enlarges  one's  country  to  the  bounds  of  civilization. 
I  cannot  think  it  justly  a  reproach  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world,  and  if  any  American  feels  it  a  grievance,  I  sug 
gest  that  he  do  what  he  can  to  have  embodied  in  the 
platform  of  his  party  a  plank  affirming  the  right  of 
American  authors  to  a  public  provision  that  will  en 
able  them  to  live  as  agreeably  at  home  as  they  can 
abroad  on  the  same  money.  In  the  mean  time,  their 
absenteeism  is  not  a  consequence  of  "the  struggle 
for  material  prosperity/'  not  a  high  disdain  of  the  strife 
which  goes  on  not  less  in  Europe  than  in  America, 
and  must,  of  course,  go  on  everywhere  as  long  as 
competitive  conditions  endure,  but  is  the  result  of 
chances  and  preferences  which  mean  nothing  nation 
ally  calamitous  or  discreditable. 


THE   HORSE  SHOW 

S  good  as  the  circus — not  so  good  as  the  circus — 
better  than  the  circus/'  These  were  my  vary 
ing  impressions,  as  I  sat  looking  down  upon  the  tan- 
bark,  the  other  day,  at  the  Horse  Show  in  Madison 
Square  Garden ;  and  I  came  away  with  their  blend  for 
my  final  opinion. 


I  might  think  that  the  Horse  Show  (which  is  so 
largely  a  Man  Show  and  a  Woman  Show)  was  better 
or  worse  than  the  circus,  or  about  as  good ;  but  I  could 
not  get  away  from  the  circus,  in  my  impression  of  it. 
Perhaps  the  circus  is  the  norm  of  all  splendors  where 
the  horse  and  his  master  are  joined  for  an  effect  upon 
the  imagination  of  the  spectator.  I  am  sure  that  I 
have  never  been  able  quite  to  dissociate  from  it  the 
picturesqueness  of  chivalry,  and  that  it  will  hereafter 
always  suggest  to  me  the  last  correctness  of  fashion. 
It  is  through  the  horse  that  these  far  extremes  meet; 
in  all  times  the  horse  has  been  the  supreme  expression 
of  aristocracy;  and  it  may  very  well  be  that  a  dream 
of  the  elder  world  prophesied  the  ultimate  type  of  the 
future,  when  the  Swell  shall  have  evolved  into  the 
Centaur. 

Some  such  teasing  notion  of  their  mystical  affinity 
is  what  haunts  you  as  you  make  your  round  of  the 
vast  ellipse,  with  the  well-groomed  men  about  you  and 
the  well- groomed  horses  beyond  the  barrier. 

206 


THE  HORSE  SHOW 

In  this  first  affair  of  the  new-comer,  the  horses 
are  not  so  much  on  show  as  the  swells ;  you  get  only 
glimpses  of  shining  coats  and  tossing  manes,  with 
a  glint  here  and  there  of  a  flying  hoof  through  the 
lines  of  people  coming  and  going,  and  the  ranks  of 
people,  three  or  four  feet  deep,  against  the  rails  of  the 
ellipse;  but  the  swells  are  there  in  perfect  relief,  and 
it  is  they  who  finally  embody  the  Horse  Show  to  you. 
The  fact  is  that  they  are  there  to  see,  of  course,  but 
the  effect  is  that  they  are  there  to  be  seen. 

The  whole  spectacle  had  an  historical  quality,  which 
I  tasted  with  pleasure.  It  was  the  thing  that  had 
eventuated  in  every  civilization,  and  the  American 
might  feel  a  characteristic  pride  that  what  came  to 
Rome  in  five  hundred  years  had  come  to  America  in 
a  single  century.  There  was  something  fine  in  the 
absolutely  fatal  nature  of  the  result,  and  I  perceived 
that  nowhere  else  in  our  life,  which  is  apt  to  be  seclu- 
sive  in  its  exclusiveness,  is  the  prime  motive  at  work 
in  it  so  dramatically  apparent.  "Yes/'  I  found  my 
self  thinking,  "this  is  what  it  all  comes  to:  the  subiti 
guadagni  of  the  new  rich,  made  in  large  masses  and 
seeking  a  swift  and  eager  exploitation,  and  the  slowly 
accumulated  fortunes,  put  together  from  sparing  and 
scrimping,  from  slaving  and  enslaving,  in  former 
times,  and  now  in  the  stainless  white  hands  of  the 
second  or  third  generation,  they  both  meet  here  to  the 
purpose  of  a  common  ostentation,  and  create  a  Horse 
Show." 

I  cannot  say  that  its  creators  looked  much  as  if  they 
liked  it,  now  they  had  got  it ;  and,  so  far  as  I  have  been 
able  to  observe  them,  people  of  wealth  and  fashion  al 
ways  dissemble  their  joy,  and  have  the  air  of  being 
bored  in  the  midst  of  their  amusements.  This  re 
serve  of  rapture  may  be  their  delicacy,  their  unwill 
ingness  to  awaken  envy  in  the  less  prospered;  and  I 

207 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

should  not  have  objected  to  the  swells  at  the  Horse 
Show  looking  dreary  if  they  had  looked  more  like 
swells;  except  for  a  certain  hardness  of  the  counte 
nance  (which  I  found  my  own  sympathetically  taking 
on)  I  should  not  have  thought  them  very  patrician, 
and  this  hardness  may  have  been  merely  the  conse 
quence  of  being  so  much  stared  at.  Perhaps,  indeed, 
they  were  not  swells  whom  I  saw  in  the  boxes,  but 
only  companies  of  ordinary  people  who  had  clubbed 
together  and  hired  their  boxes ;  I  understand  that  this 
can  be  done,  and  the  student  of  civilization  so  far  mis 
led.  But  certainly  if  they  were  swells  they  did  not  look 
quite  up  to  themselves ;  though,  for  that  matter,  neither 
do  the  nobilities  of  foreign  countries,  and  on  one  or 
two  occasions  when  I  have  seen  them,  kings  and  em 
perors  have  failed  me  in  like  manner.  They  have  all 
wanted  that  indescribable  something  which  I  have 
found  so  satisfying  in  aristocracies  and  royalties  on 
the  stage;  and  here  at  the  Horse  Show,  while  I  made 
my  tour,  I  constantly  met  handsome,  actor-like  folk 
on  foot  who  could  much  better  have  taken  the  r61e  of 
the  people  in  the  boxes.  The  promenaders  may  not 
have  been  actors  at  all ;  they  may  have  been  the  real 
thing  for  which  I  was  in  vain  scanning  the  boxes, 
but  they  looked  like  actors,  who  indeed  set  an  exam 
ple  to  us  all  in  personal  beauty  and  in  correctness  of 
dress. 

I  mean  nothing  offensive  either  to  swells  or  to  actors. 
We  have  not  distinction,  as  a  people ;  Matthew  Arnold 
noted  that ;  and  it  is  not  our  business  to  have  it.  When 
it  is  our  business  our  swells  will  have  it,  just  as  our 
actors  now  have  it,  especially  our  actors  of  English 
birth.  I  had  not  this  reflection  about  me  at  the  time 
to  console  me  for  my  disappointment,  and  it  only  now 
occurs  to  me  that  what  I  took  for  an  absence  of  distinc 
tion  may  have  been  such  a  universal  prevalence  of  it 

208 


THE    EFFECT    IS   THAT   THEY   ARE    THERE    TO    P,E    SEEN 


THE   HORSE    SHOW 

that  the  result  was  necessarily  a  species  of  indistinc- 
tion.  But  in  the  complexion  of  any  social  assembly 
we  Americans  are  at  a  disadvantage  with  Europeans 
from  the  want  of  uniforms.  A  few  military  scattered 
about  in  those  boxes,  or  even  a  few  sporting  bishops  in 
shovel-hats  and  aprons,  would  have  done  much  to  re 
lieve  them  from  the  reproach  1  have  been  heaping 
upon  them.  Our  women,  indeed,  poor  things,  alwa}^s 
do  their  duty  in  personal  splendor,  and  it  is  not  of  a 
poverty  in  their  modes  at  the  Horse  Show  that  I  am 
complaining.  If  the  men  had  borne  their  part  as 
well,  there  would  not  have  been  these  tears ;  and  yet, 
what  am  I  saying?  There  was  here  and  there  a  clean 
shaven  face  (which  I  will  not  believe  was  always  an 
actor's),  and  here  and  there  a  figure  superbly  set  up, 
and  so  faultlessly  appointed  as  to  shoes,  trousers, 
coat,  tie,  hat,  and  gloves  as  to  have  a  salience  from 
the  mass  of  good  looks  and  good  clothes  which  I  will 
not  at  last  call  less  than  distinction. 


II 

At  any  rate,  I  missed  these  marked  presences  when 
I  left  the  lines  of  the  promenaders  around  the  ellipse, 
and  climbed  to  a  seat  some  tiers  above  the  boxes.  I 
am  rather  anxious  to  have  it  known  that  my  seat  was 
not  one  of  those  cheap  ones  in  the  upper  gallery,  but 
was  with  the  virtuous  poor  who  could  afford  to  pay  a 
dollar  and  a  half  for  their  tickets.  I  bought  it  of  a 
speculator  on  the  sidewalk,  who  said  it  was  his  last, 
so  that  I  conceived  it  the  last  in  the  house ;  but  I  found 
the  chairs  by  no  means  all  filled,  though  it  was  as 
good  an  audience  as  I  have  sometimes  seen  in  the 
same  place  at  other  circuses.  The  people  about  me 
were  such  as  I  had  noted  at  the  other  circuses,  hotel- 
'4  209 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

sojourners,  kindly  -  looking  comers  from  provincial 
towns  and  cities,  whom  I  instantly  felt  myself  at  home 
with,  and  free  to  put  off  that  gloomy  severity  of  as 
pect  which  had  grown  upon  me  during  my  association 
with  the  swells  below.  My  neighbors  were  sufficiently 
well  dressed,  and  if  they  had  no  more  distinction  than 
their  betters,  or  their  richers,  they  had  not  the  burden 
of  the  occasion  upon  them,  and  seemed  really  glad  of 
what  was  going  on  in  the  ring. 

There  again  I  was  sensible  of  the  vast  advantage  of 
costume.  The  bugler  who  stood  up  at  one  end  of  the 
central  platform  and  blew  a  fine  fanfare  (I  hope  it  was 
a  fanfare)  towards  the  gates  where  the  horses  were  to 
enter  from  their  stalls  in  the  basement  was  a  hussar- 
like  shape  that  filled  my  romantic  soul  with  joy;  and 
the  other  figures  of  the  management  I  thought  very 
fortunate  compromises  between  grooms  and  ring 
masters.  At  any  rate,  their  nondescript  costumes 
were  gay,  and  a  relief  from  the  fashions  in  the  boxes 
and  the  promenade;  they  were  costumes,  and  cos 
tumes  are  always  more  sincere,  if  not  more  effective, 
than  fashions.  As  I  have  hinted,  I  do  not  know  just 
what  costumes  they  were,  but  they  took  the  light  well 
from  the  girandole  far  aloof  and  from  the  thousands 
of  little  electric  bulbs  that  beaded  the  roof  in  long  lines, 
and  dispersed  the  sullenness  of  the  dull,  rainy  after 
noon.  When  the  knights  entered  the  lists  on  the  seats 
of  their  dog-carts,  with  their  squires  beside  them,  and 
their  shining  tandems  before  them,  they  took  the  light 
well,  too,  and  the  spectacle  was  so  brilliant  that  I  trust 
my  imagery  may  be  forgiven  a  novelist  pining  for 
the  pageantries  of  the  past.  I  do  not  know  to  this 
moment  whether  these  knights  were  bona  fide  gentle 
men,  or  only  their  deputies,  driving  their  tandems  for 
them,  and  I  am  equally  at  a  loss  to  account  for  the 
variety  of  their  hats.  Some  wore  tall,  shining  silk 

210 


THE   HORSE   SHOW 

hats;  some  flat- topped,  brown  derbys;  some  simple 
black  pot-hats; — and  is  there,  then,  no  rigor  as  to  the 
head -gear  of  people  driving  tandems?  I  felt  that 
there  ought  to  be,  and  that  there  ought  to  be  some  rule 
as  to  where  the  number  of  each  tandem  should  be  dis 
played.  As  it  was,  this  was  sometimes  carelessly 
stuck  into  the  seat  of  the  cart;  sometimes  it  was  worn 
at  the  back  of  the  groom's  waist,  and  sometimes  full 
upon  his  stomach.  In  the  last  position  it  gave  a  touch 
of  burlesque  which  wounded  me;  for  these  are  vital 
matters,  and  I  found  myself  very  exacting  in  them. 

With  the  horses  themselves  I  could  find  no  fault 
upon  the  grounds  of  my  censure  of  the  show  in  some 
other  ways.  They  had  distinction;  they  were  patri 
cian;  they  were  swell.  They  felt  it,  they  showed  it, 
they  rejoiced  in  it;  and  the  most  reluctant  observer 
could  not  deny  them  the  glory  of  blood,  of  birth,  which 
the  thoroughbred  horse  has  expressed  in  all  lands  and 
ages.  Their  lordly  port  was  a  thing  that  no  one  could 
dispute,  and  for  an  aristocracy  I  suppose  that  they 
had  a  high  average  of  intelligence,  though  there  might 
be  two  minds  about  this.  They  made  me  think  of 
mettled  youths  and  haughty  dames;  they  abashed 
the  humble  spirit  of  the  beholder  with  the  pride  of  their 
high  -  stepping,  their  curvetting  and  caracoling,  as 
they  jingled  in  their  shining  harness  around  the  long 
ring.  Their  noble  uselessness  took  the  fancy,  for  I 
suppose  that  there  is  nothing  so  superbly  superfluous 
as  a  tandem,  outside  or  inside  of  the  best  society.  It 
is  something  which  only  the  ambition  of  wealth  and 
unbroken  leisure  can  mount  to ;  and  I  was  glad  that  the 
display  of  tandems  was  the  first  event  of  the  Horse 
Show  which  I  witnessed,  for  it  seemed  to  me  that  it 
must  beyond  all  others  typify  the  power  which  created 
the  Horse  Show.  I  wished  that  the  human  side  of 
it  could  have  been  more  unquestionably  adequate, 

211 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

but  the  equine  side  of  the  event  was  perfect.  Still,  I 
felt  a  certain  relief,  as  in  something  innocent  and  sim 
ple  and  childlike,  in  the  next  event. 


Ill 

This  was  the  inundation  of  the  tan-bark  with  troops 
of  pretty  Shetland  ponies  of  all  ages,  sizes,  and  colors. 
A  cry  of  delight  went  up  from  a  group  of  little  people 
near  me,  and  the  spell  of  the  Horse  Show  was  broken. 
It  was  no  longer  a  solemnity  of  fashion,  it  was  a  sweet 
and  kindly  pleasure  which  every  one  could  share,  or 
every  one  who  had  ever  had,  or  ever  wished  to  have, 
a  Shetland  pony;  the  touch  of  nature  made  the  whole 
show  kin.  I  could  not  see  that  the  freakish,  kittenish 
creatures  did  anything  to  claim  our  admiration,  but 
they  won  our  affection  by  every  trait  of  ponyish  ca 
price  and  obstinacy.  The  small  colts  broke  away 
from  the  small  mares,  and  gambolled  over  the  tan- 
bark  in  wanton  groups,  with  gay  or  plaintive  whinny- 
ings,  which  might  well  have  touched  a  responsive 
chord  in  the  bosom  of  fashion  itself ;  I  dare  say  it  is 
not  so  hard  as  it  looks.  The  scene  remanded  us  to  a 
moment  of  childhood;  and  I  found  myself  so  fond  of 
all  the  ponies  that  I  felt  it  invidious  of  the  judges  to 
choose  among  them  for  the  prizes;  they  ought  every 
one  to  have  had  the  prize. 

I  suppose  a  Shetland  pony  is  not  a  very  useful  ani 
mal  in  our  conditions ;  no  doubt  a  good,  tough,  stubbed 
donkey  would  be  worth  all  their  tribe  when  it  came 
down  to  hard  work ;  but  we  cannot  all  be  hard-working 
donkeys,  and  some  of  us  may  be  toys  and  playthings 
without  too  great  reproach.  I  gazed  after  the  broken, 
refluent  wave  of  these  amiable  creatures,  with  the 
vague  toleration  here  formulated,  but  I  was  not  quite 

2T2 


THE    HORSE   SHOW 

at  peace  in  it,  or  fully  consoled  in  my  habitual  ethicism 
till  the  next  event  brought  the  hunters  with  their  high- 
jumping  into  the  ring.  These  noble  animals  unite 
use  and  beauty  in  such  measure  that  the  censor  must 
be  of  Catonian  severity  who  can  refuse  them  his  praise. 
When  I  reflected  that  by  them  and  their  devoted  riders 
our  civilization  had  been  assimilated  to  that  of  the 
mother-country  in  its  finest  expression,  and  another 
tie  added  to  those  that  bind  us  to  her  through  the  lan 
guage  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton ;  that  they  had  tamed 
the  haughty  spirit  of  the  American  farmer  in  several 
parts  of  the  country  so  that  he  submitted  for  a  con 
sideration  to  have  his  crops  ridden  over,  and  that  they 
had  all  but  exterminated  the  ferocious  anise-seed  bag, 
once  so  common  and  destructive  among  us,  I  was  in 
a  fit  mood  to  welcome  the  bars  and  hurdles  which  were 
now  set  up  at  four  or  five  places  for  the  purposes  of  the 
high-jumping. 

As  to  the  beauty  of  the  hunting-horse,  though,  I 
think  I  must  hedge  a  little,  while  I  stand  firmly  to 
my  admiration  of  his  use.  To  be  honest,  the  tandem 
horse  is  more  to  my  taste.  He  is  better  shaped,  and  he 
bears  himself  more  proudly.  The  hunter  is  apt  to 
behave,  whatever  his  reserve  of  intelligence,  like  an 
excited  hen ;  he  is  apt  to  be  ewe-necked  and  bred  away 
to  nothing  where  the  ideal  horse  abounds ;  he  has  the 
behavior  of  a  turkey-hen  when  not  behaving  like  the 
common  or  garden  hen.  But  there  can  be  no  ques 
tion  of  his  jumping,  which  seems  to  be  his  chief  busi 
ness  in  a  world  where  we  are  all  appointed  our  several 
duties,  and  I  at  once  began  to  take  a  vivid  pleasure  in 
his  proficiency.  I  have  always  felt  a  blind  and  in 
sensate  joy  in  running  races,  _which  has  no  relation 
to  any  particular  horse,  and  I  now  experienced  an  im 
partial  rapture  in  the  performances  of  these  hunters. 
They  looked  very  much  alike,  and  if  it  had  not  been 

213 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

for  the  changing  numbers  on  the  sign-board  in  the 
centre  of  the  ring  announcing  that  650,  675,  or  602 
was  now  jumping,  I  might  have  thought  it  was  650 
all  the  time. 

A  high  jump  is  not  so  fine  a  sight  as  a  running  race 
when  the  horses  have  got  half  a  mile  away  and  look 
like  a  covey  of  swift  birds,  but  it  is  still  a  fine  sight. 
I  became  very  fastidious  as  to  which  moment  of  it  was 
the  finest,  whether  when  the  horse  rose  in  profile,  or 
when  his  aerial  hoof  touched  the  ground  (with  the 
effect  of  half  jerking  his  rider's  head  half  off),  or  when 
he  showed  a  flying  heel  in  perspective;  and  I  do  not 
know  to  this  hour  which  I  prefer.  But  I  suppose  I 
was  becoming  gradually  spoiled  by  my  pleasure,  for 
as  time  went  on  I  noticed  that  I  was  not  satisfied  with 
the  monotonous  excellence  of  the  horses'  execution. 
Will  it  be  credited  that  I  became  willing  something 
should  happen,  anything,  to  vary  it?  I  asked  myself 
why,  if  some  of  the  more  exciting  incidents  of  the  hunt 
ing-field  which  I  had  read  of  must  befall,  I  should  not 
see  them.  Several  of  the  horses  had  balked  at  the 
barriers,  and  almost  thrown  their  riders  across  them 
over  their  necks,  but  not  quite  done  it;  several  had 
carried  away  the  green-tufted  top  rail  with  their  heels ; 
when  suddenly  there  came  a  loud  clatter  from  the 
farther  side  of  the  ellipse,  where  a  whole  panel  of  fence 
\  had  gone  down,  I  looked  eagerly  for  the  prostrate 
horse  and  rider  under  the  bars,  but  they  were  canter 
ing  safely  away 

IV 

It  was  enough,  however.  I  perceived  that  I  was 
becoming  demoralized,  and  that  if  I  were  to  write  of 
the  Horse  Show  with  at  all  the  superiority  one  likes 
to  feel  towards  the  rich  and  great,  I  had  better  come 

214 


THE    HORSE   SHOW 

away.  But  I  came  away  critical,  even  in  my  down 
fall,  and  feeling  that,  circus  for  circus,  the  Greatest 
Show  on  Earth  which  I  had  often  seen  in  that  place 
had  certain  distinct  advantages  of  the  Horse  Show. 
It  had  three  rings  and  two  platforms ;  and,  for  another 
thing,  the  drivers  and  riders  in  the  races,  when  they 
won,  bore  the  banner  of  victory  aloft  in  their  hands, 
instead  of  poorly  letting  a  blue  or  red  ribbon  flicker  at 
their  horses'  ears.  The  events  were  more  frequent 
and  rapid;  the  costumes  infinitely  more  varied  and 
picturesque.  As  for  the  people  in  the  boxes,  I  do  not 
know  that  they  were  less  distinguished  than  these  at 
the  Horse  Show,  but  if  they  were  not  of  the  same  high 
level  in  which  distinction  was  impossible,  they  did 
not  show  it  in  their  looks. 

The  Horse  Show,  in  fine,  struck  me  as  a  circus  of 
not  all  the  first  qualities;  and  I  had  moments  of  sus-i 
pecting  that  it  was  no  more  than  the  evolution  of  the 
county  cattle  show.  But  in  any  case  I  had  to  own 
that  its  great  success  was  quite  legitimate;  for  the 
horse,  upon  the  whole,  appeals  to  a  wider  range  of 
humanity,  vertically  as  well  as  horizontally,  than 
any  other  interest,  not  excepting  politics  or  religion. 
I  cannot,  indeed,  regard  him  as  a  civilizing  influence ; 
but  then  we  cannot  be  always  civilizing. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  THE   SUMMER 

IT  has  sometimes  seemed  to  me  that  the  solution  of 
the  problem  how  and  where  to  spend  the  summer 
was  simplest  with  those  who  were  obliged  to  spend  it 
as  they  spent  the  winter,  and  increasingly  difficult  in 
the  proportion  of  one's  ability  to  spend  it  wherever 
and  however  one  chose.  Few  are  absolutely  released 
to  this  choice,  however,  and  those  few  are  greatly  to 
be  pitied.  I  know  that  they  are  often  envied  and  hated 
for  it  by  those  who  have  no  such  choice,  but  that  is  a 
pathetic  mistake.  If  we  could  look  into  their  hearts, 
indeed,  we  should  witness  there  so  much  misery  that 
we  should  wish  rather  to  weep  over  them  than  to  re 
proach  them  with  their  better  fortune,  or  what  ap 
peared  so. 


For  most  people  choice  is  a  curse,  and  it  is  this  curse 
that  the  summer  brings  upon  great  numbers  who 
would  not  perhaps  otherwise  be  afflicted.  They  are 
not  in  the  happy  case  of  those  who  must  stay  at  home ; 
their  hard  necessity  is  that  they  can  go  away,  and  try 
to  be  more  agreeably  placed  somewhere  else;  but  al 
though  I  say  they  are  in  great  numbers,  they  are  an 
infinitesimal  minority  of  the  whole  bulk  of  our  popu 
lation.  Their  bane  is  not,  in  its  highest  form,  that 
of  the  average  American  who  has  no  choice  of  the 
kind;  and  when  one  begins  to  speak  of  the  summer 

216 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  THE   SUMMER 

problem,  one  must  begin  at  once  to  distinguish.  It 
is  the  problem  of  the  East  rather  than  of  the  West 
(where  people  are  much  more  in  the  habit  of  staying 
at  home  the  year  round),  and  it  is  the  problem  of  the 
city  and  not  of  the  country.  1  am  not  sure  that  there 
is  one  practical  farmer  in  the  whole  United  States 
who  is  obliged  to  witness  in  his  household  those  sad 
dissensions  which  almost  separate  the  families  of  pro 
fessional  men  as  to  where  and  how  they  shall  pass  the 
summer.  People  of  this  class,  which  is  a  class  with 
some  measure  of  money,  ease,  and  taste,  are  common 
ly  of  varying  and  decided  minds,  and  I  once  knew  a 
family  of  the  sort  whose  combined  ideal  for  their  sum 
mer  outing  was  summed  up  in  the  simple  desire  for 
society  and  solitude,  mountain -air  and  sea-bathing. 
They  spent  the  whole  months  of  April,  May,  and  June 
in  a  futile  inquiry  for  a  resort  uniting  these  attrac 
tions,  and  on  the  first  of  July  they  drove  to  the  station 
with  no  definite  point  in  view.  But  they  found  that 
they  could  get  return  tickets  for  a  certain  place  on  an 
inland  lake  at  a  low  figure,  and  they  took  the  first 
train  for  it.  There  they  decided  next  morning  to 
push  on  to  the  mountains,  and  sent  their  baggage  to 
the  station,  but  before  it  was  checked  they  changed 
their  minds,  and  remained  two  weeks  where  they  were. 
Then  they  took  train  for  a  place  on  the  coast,  but  in 
the  cars  a  friend  told  them  they  ought  to  go  to  another 
place;  they  decided  to  go  there,  but  before  arriving  at 
the  junction  they  decided  again  to  keep  on.  They 
arrived  at  their  original  destination,  and  the  follow 
ing  day  telegraphed  for  rooms  at  a  hotel  farther  down 
the  coast.  The  answer  came  that  there  were  no  rooms, 
and  being  by  this  time  ready  to  start,  they  started, 
and  in  due  time  reported  themselves  at  the  hotel.  The 
landlord  saw  that  something  must  be  done,  and  he 
got  them  rooms,  at  a  smaller  house,  and  mealed  them 

217 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

(as  it  used  to  be  called  at  Mt.  Desert)  in  his  own.  But 
upon  experiment  of  the  fare  at  the  smaller  house  they 
liked  it  so  well  that  they  resolved  to  live  there  alto 
gether,  and  they  spent  a  summer  of  the  greatest  com 
fort  there,  so  that  they  would  hardly  come  away  when 
the  house  closed  in  the  fall. 

This  was  an  extreme  case,  and  perhaps  such  a  vent 
ure  might  not  always  turn  out  so  happily ;  but  I  think 
that  people  might  oftener  trust  themselves  to  Provi 
dence  in  these  matters  than  they  do.  There  is  really 
an  infinite  variety  of  pleasant  resorts  of  all  kinds  now, 
and  one  could  quite  safely  leave  it  to  the  man  in  the 
ticket-office  where  one  should  go,  and  check  one's 
baggage  accordingly.  I  think  the  chances  of  an 
agreeable  summer  would  be  as  good  in  that  way  as 
in  making  a  hard-and-fast  choice  of  a  certain  place 
and  sticking  to  it.  My  own  experience  is  that  in  these 
things  chance  makes  a  very  good  choice  for  one,  as 
it  does  in  most  non-moral  things. 

II 

A  joke  dies  hard,  and  I  am  not  sure  that  the  life  is 
yet  quite  out  of  the  kindly  ridicule  that  was  cast  for  a 
whole  generation  upon  the  people  who  left  their  com 
fortable  houses  in  town  to  starve  upon  farm-board 
or  stifle  in  the  narrow  rooms  of  mountain  and  sea 
side  hotels.  Yet  such  people  were  in  the  right,  and 
their  mockers  were  in  the  wrong,  and  their  patient 
persistence  in  going  out  of  town  for  the  summer  in 
the  face  of  severe  discouragements  has  multiplied 
indefinitely  the  kinds  of  summer  resorts,  and  reformed 
them  altogether.  I  believe  the  city  boarding-house 
remains  very  much  what  it  used  to  be ;  but  I  am  bound 
to  say  that  the  country  boarding-house  has  vastly 
improved  since  I  began  to  know  it.  As  for  the  sum- 

218 


THE   PROBLEM    OF   THE    SUMMER 

mer  hotel,  by  steep  or  by  strand,  it  leaves  little  to  be 
complained  of  except  the  prices.  I  take  it  for  granted, 
therefore,  that  the  out-of-town  summer  has  come  to 
stay,  for  all  who  can  afford  it,  and  that  the  chief  sor 
row  attending  it  is  that  curse  of  choice,  which  I  have  ' 
already  spoken  of. 

I  have  rather  favored  chance  than  choice,  because, 
whatever  choice  you  make,  you  are  pretty  sure  to  re- j 
gret  it,  with  a  bitter  sense  of  responsibility  added, 
which  you  cannot  feel  if  chance  has  chosen  for  you. 
I  observe  that  people  who  own  summer  cottages  are 
often  apt  to  wish  they  did  not,  and  were  foot-loose  to  / 
roam  where  they  listed,  and  I  have  been  told  that  even 
a  yacht  is  not  a  source  of  unmixed  content,  though  so 
eminently  detachable.  To  great  numbers  Europe  looks 
from  this  shore  like  a  safe  refuge  from  the  American 
summer  problem ;  and  yet  I  am  not  sure  that  it  is  alto 
gether  so;  for  it  is  not  enough  merely  to  go  to  Europe; 
one  has  to  choose  where  to  go  when  one  has  got  there. 
A  European  city  is  certainly  always  more  tolerable 
than  an  American  city,  but  one  cannot  very  well  pass 
the  summer  in  Paris,  or  even  in  London.  The  heart 
there,  as  here,  will  yearn  for  some  blessed  seat 

"  Where  falls  not  hail,  or  rain,  or  any  snow, 
Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly;  but  it  lies 
Deep-meadow' d,  happy,  fair  with  orchard  lawns 
And  bowery  hollows  crown'd  with  summer  sea," 

and  still,  after  your  keel  touches  the  strand  of  that 
alluring  old  world,  you  must  buy  your  ticket  and  reg 
ister  your  trunk  for  somewhere  in  particular. 

Ill 

It  is  truly  a  terrible  stress,  this  summer  problem, 
and,  as  I  say,  my  heart  aches  much  more  for  those  who 

219 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

have  to  solve  it  and  suffer  the  consequences  of  their 
choice  than  for  those  who  have  no  choice,  but  must 
stay  the  summer  through  where  ^their  work  is,  and  be 
humbly  glad  that  they  have  any  work  to  keep  them 
there.  I  am  not  meaning  now,  of  course,  business 
men  obliged  to  remain  in  the  city  to  earn  the  bread — or, 
more  correctly,  the  cake — of  their  families  in  the  coun 
try,  or  even  their  clerks  and  bookkeepers,  and  porters 
and  messengers,  but  such  people  as  I  sometimes  catch 
sight  of  from  the  elevated  trains  (in  my  reluctant 
midsummer  flights  through  the  city),  sweltering  in 
upper  rooms  over  sewing-machines  or  lap-boards,  or 
stewing  in  the  breathless  tenement  streets,  or  driving 
clangorous  trucks,  or  monotonous  cars,  or  bending 
over  wash-tubs  at  open  windows  for  breaths  of  the 
no-air  without. 

These  all  get  on  somehow,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
summer  they  have  not  to  accuse  themselves  of  folly 
in  going  to  one  place  rather  than  another.  Their 
fate  is  decided  for  them,  and  they  submit  to  it ;  whereas 
those  who  decide  their  fate  are  always  rebelling  against 
it.  They  it  is  whom  I  am  truly  sorry  for,  and  whom  I 
write  of  with  tears  in  my  ink.  Their  case  is  hard,  and 
it  will  seem  all  the  harder  if  we  consider  how  foolish 
they  will  look  and  how  flat  they  will  feel  at  the  judg 
ment-day,  when  they  are  asked  about  their  summer 
outings.  I  do  not  really  suppose  we  shall  be  held  to 
a  very  strict  account  for  our  pleasures  because  every 
body  else  has  not  enjoyed  them,  too ;  that  would  be  a 
pity  of  our  lives;  and  yet  there  is  an  old-fashioned 
compunction  which  will  sometimes  visit  the  heart  if 
we  take  our  pleasures  ungraciously,  when  so  many 
have  no  pleasures  to  take.  I  would  suggest,  then, 
to  those  on  whom  the  curse  of  choice  between  pleasures 
rests,  that  they  should  keep  in  mind  those  who  have 
chiefly  pains  to  their  portion  in  life. 

220 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   THE   SUMMER 

I  am  not,  I  hope,  urging  my  readers  to  any  active 
benevolence,  or  counselling  them  to  share  their  pleas 
ures  with  others;  it  has  been  accurately  ascertained 
that  there  are  not  pleasures  enough  to  go  round,  as 
things  now  are;  but  I  would  seriously  entreat  them 
to  consider  whether  they  could  not  somewhat  alleviate 
the  hardships  of  their  own  lot  at  the  sea-side  or  among 
the  mountains,  by  contrasting  it  with  the  lot  of  others 
in  the  sweat-shops  and  the  boiler-factories  of  life.  I 
know  very  well  that  it  is  no  longer  considered  very 
good  sense  or  very  good  morality  to  take  comfort  in 
one's  advantages  from  the  disadvantages  of  others, 
and  this  is  not  quite  what  I  mean  to  teach.  Perhaps 
I  mean  nothing  more  than  an  overhauling  of  the  whole 
subject  of  advantages  and  disadvantages,  which  would 
be  a  light  and  agreeable  occupation  for  the  leisure  of 
the  summer  outer.  It  might  be  very  interesting,  and 
possibly  it  might  be  amusing,  for  one  stretched  upon 
the  beach  or  swaying  in  the  hammock  to  inquire  into 
the  reasons  for  his  or  her  being  so  favored,  and  it  is 
not  beyond  the  bounds  of  expectation  that  a  consensus 
of  summer  opinion  on  this  subject  would  go  far  to  en 
lighten  the  world  upon  a  question  that  has  vexed  the 
world  ever  since  mankind  was  divided  into  those  who 
work  too  much  and  those  who  rest  too  much. 


AESTHETIC  NEW  YORK  FIFTY-ODD  YEARS   AGO 

A  STUDY  of  New  York  civilization  in  1849  has 
lately  come  into  my  hands,  with  a  mortifying 
effect,  which  I  should  like  to  share  with  the  reader, 
to  my  pride  of  modernity.  I  had  somehow  believed 
that  after  half  a  century  of  material  prosperity,  such 
as  the  world  has  never  seen  before,  New  York  in  1902 
must  be  very  different  from  New  York  in  1849,  but  if 
I  am  to  trust  either  the  impressions  of  the  earlier  stu 
dent  or  my  own,  New  York  is  essentially  the  same 
now  that  it  was  then.  The  spirit  of  the  place  has  not 
changed ;  it  is  as  it  was,  splendidly  and  sordidly  com 
mercial.  Even  the  body  of  it  has  undergone  little  or 
no  alteration;  it  was  as  shapeless,  as  incongruous,  as 
ugly  when  the  author  of  New  York  in  Slices  wrote  as 
it  is  at  this  writing ;  it  has  simply  grown,  or  overgrown, 
on  the  moral  and  material  lines  which  seem  to  have 
been  structural  in  it  from  the  beginning.  He  felt  in 
his  time  the  same  vulgarity,  the  same  violence,  in  its 
architectural  anarchy  that  I  have  felt  in  my  time, 
and  he  noted  how  all  dignity  and  beauty  perished, 
amid  the  warring  forms,  with  a  prescience  of  my  own 
affliction,  which  deprives  me  of  the  satisfaction  of  a 
discoverer  and  leaves  me  merely  the  sense  of  being 
rather  old-fashioned  in  my  painful  emotions. 


I  wish  I  could  pretend  that  my  author  philosophized 
the  facts  of  his  New  York  with  something  less  than 

222 


AESTHETIC   NEW  YORK.  FIFTY-ODD  YEARS  AGO 

the  raw  haste  of  the  young  journalist ;  but  I  am  afraid 
I  must  own  that  New  York  in  Slices  affects  one  as 
having  first  been  printed  in  an  evening  paper,  and 
that  the  writer  brings  to  the  study  of  the  metropolis 
something  like  the  eager  horror  of  a  country  visitor. 
This  probably  enabled  him  to  heighten  the  effect  he 
wished  to  make  with  readers  of  a  kindred  tradition, 
and  for  me  it  adds  a  certain  innocent  charm  to  his 
work.  I  may  make  myself  better  understood  if  I  say 
that  his  attitude  towards  the  depravities  of  a  smaller 
New  York  is  much  the  same  as  that  of  Mr.  Stead  tow 
ards  the  wickedness  of  a  much  larger  Chicago.  He 
seizes  with  some  such  avidity  upon  the  darker  facts 
of  the  prisons,  the  slums,  the  gambling- houses,  the 
mock  auctions,  the  toughs  (who  then  called  them 
selves  b'hoys  and  g'hals),  the  quacks,  the  theatres, 
and  even  the  intelligence  offices,  and  exploits  their 
iniquities  with  a  ready  virtue  which  the  wickedest  reader 
can  enjoy  with  him. 

But  if  he  treated  of  these  things  alone,  I  should  not 
perhaps  have  brought  his  curious  little  book  to  the 
polite  notice  of  my  readers.  He  treats  also  of  the  press, 
the  drama,  the  art,  and,  above  all,  "  the  literary  soirees  " 
of  that  remote  New  York  of  his  in  a  manner  to  make 
us  latest  New-Yorkers  feel  our  close  proximity  to  it. 
Fifty -odd  years  ago  journalism  had  already  become 
"the  absorbing,  remorseless,  clamorous  thing"  we 
now  know,  and  very  different  from  the  thing  it  was 
when  "expresses  were  unheard  of,  and  telegraphs 
were  uncrystallized  from  the  lightning's  blue  and  fiery 
film."  Reporterism  was  beginning  to  assume  its 
present  importance,  but  it  had  not  yet  become  the 
paramount  intellectual  interest,  and  did  not  yet  "  stand 
shoulder  to  shoulder"  with  the  counting-room  in  au 
thority.  Great  editors,  then  as  now,  ranked  great 
authors  in  the  public  esteem,  or  achieved  a  double 

223 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

primacy  by  uniting  journalism  and  literature  in  the 
same  personality.  They  were  often  the  owners  as  well 
as  the  writers  of  their  respective  papers,  and  they  in 
dulged  for  the  advantage  of  the  community  the  ran 
corous  rivalries,  recriminations,  and  scurrilities  which 
often  form  the  charm,  if  not  the  chief  use,  of  our  contem 
poraneous  journals.  Apparently,  however,  notarially 
authenticated  boasts  of  circulation  had  not  yet  been 
made  the  delight  of  their  readers,  and  the  press  had 
not  become  the  detective  agency  that  it  now  is,  nor  the 
organizer  and  distributer  of  charities. 

But  as  dark  a  cloud  of  doubt  rested  upon  its 
relations  to  the  theatre  as  still  eclipses  the  popular 
faith  in  dramatic  criticism.  "How  can  you  expect," 
our  author  asks,  "a  frank  and  unbiassed  criticism 
upon  the  performance  of  George  Frederick  Cooke 
Snooks  .  .  .  when  the  editor  or  reporter  who  is  to  write 
it  has  just  been  supping  on  beefsteak  and  stewed 
potatoes  at  Windust's,  and  regaling  himself  on  brandy- 
and-water  cold,  without,  at  the  expense  of  the  afore 
said  George  Frederick  Cooke  Snooks?"  The  severest 
censor  of  the  press,  however,  would  hardly  declare 
now  that  "as  to  such  a  thing  as  impartial  and  inde 
pendent  criticism  upon  theatres  iri  the  present  state 
of  the  relations  between  editors,  reporters,  managers, 
actors — and  actresses — the  thing  is  palpably  out  of 
the  question,"  and  if  matters  were  really  at  the  pass 
hinted,  the  press  has  certainly  improved  in  fifty  years, 
if  one  may  judge  from  its  present  frank  condemna 
tions  of  plays  and  players.  The  theatre  apparently 
has  not,  for  we  read  that  at  that  period  "  a  very  great 
majority  of  the  standard  plays  and  farces  on  the  stage 
depend  mostly  for  their  piquancy  and  their  power  of 
interesting  an  audience  upon  intrigues  with  married 
women,  elopements,  seductions,  bribery,  cheating,  and 
fraud  of  every  description.  .  .  .  Stage  costume,  too, 

224 


ESTHETIC   NEW  YORK  FIFTY- ODD  YEARS  AGO 

wherever  there  is  half  a  chance,  is  usually  made  as 
lascivious  and  immodest  as  possible;  and  a  freedom 
and  impropriety  prevails  among  the  characters  of  the 
piece  which  would  be  kicked  out  of  private  society 
the  instant  it  would  have  the  audacity  to  make  its 
appearance  there/' 

II 

I  hope  private  society  in  New  York  would  still  be  / 
found  as  correct  if  not  quite  so  violent;  and  I  wish  I 
could  believe  that  the  fine  arts  were  presently  in  as 
flourishing  a  condition  among  us  as  they  were  in  1849. 
That  was  the  prosperous  day  of  the  Art  Unions,  in 
which  the  artists  clubbed  their  output,  and  the  sub 
scribers  parted  the  works  among  themselves  by  some 
thing  so  very  like  raffling  that  the  Art  Unions  were 
finally  suppressed  under  the  law  against  lotteries. 
While  they  lasted,  however,  they  had  exhibitions  , 
thronged  by  our  wealth,  fashion,  and  intellect  (to 
name  them  in  the  order  they  hold  the  New  York  mind), 
as  our  private  views  now  are,  or  ought  to  be;  and  the 
author  "devotes  an  entire  number"  of  his  series  "to 
a  single  institution — fearless  of  being  accused  of  par 
tiality  by  any  who  rightly  appreciate  the  influences 
of  the  fine  arts  upon  the  morals  and  refinement  of 
mankind/' 

He  devotes  even  more  than  an  entire  number  to  lit 
erature  ;  for,  besides  treating  of  various  literary  celeb 
rities  at  the  "literary  soiree's,"  he  imagines  encoun 
tering  several  of  them  at  the  high-class  restaurants. 
At  Delmonico's,  where  if  you  had  "  French  and  money  " 
you  could  get  in  that  day  "  a  dinner  which,  as  a  work 
of  art,  ranks  with  a  picture  by  Huntington,  a  poem 
by  Willis,  or  a  statue  by  Powers,"  he  meets  such  a 
musical  critic  as  Richard  Grant  White,  such  an  in- 
15  225 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

tellectual  epicurean  as  N.  P.  Willis,  such  a  lyric  poet 
as  Charles  Fenno  Hoffman.  But  it  would  be  a  warm 
day  for  Delmonico's  when  the  observer  in  this  epoch 
could  chance  upon  so  much  genius  at  its  tables,  per 
haps  because  genius  among  us  has  no  longer  the 
French  or  the  money.  Indeed,  the  author  of  New 
York  in  Slices  seems  finally  to  think  that  he  has  gone 
too  far,  even  for  his  own  period,  and  brings  himself 
up  with  the  qualifying  reservation  that  if  Willis  and 
Hoffman  never  did  dine  together  at  Delmonico's,  they 
ought  to  have  done  so.  He  has  apparently  no  mis 
givings  as  to  the  famous  musical  critic,  and  he  has  no 
scruple  in  assembling  for  us  at  his  "literary  soiree  " 
a  dozen  distinguished  -  looking  men  and  "  twice  as 
many  women  .  .  .  listening  to  a  tall,  deaconly  man, 
who  stands  between  two  candles  held  by  a  couple  of 
sticks  summoned  from  the  recesses  of  the  back  par 
lor,  reading  a  basketful  of  gilt-edged  notes.  It  is  ... 
the  annual  Valentine  Party,  to  which  all  the  male 
and  female  authors  have  contributed  for  the  purpose 
of  saying  on  paper  charming  things  of  each  other, 
and  at  which,  for  a  few  hours,  all  are  gratified  with 
the  full  meed  of  that  praise  which  a  cold  world  is  chary 
of  bestowing  upon  its  literary  cobweb-spinners." 

It  must  be  owned  that  we  have  no  longer  anything 
so  like  a  salon  as  this.  It  is,  indeed,  rather  terrible, 
and  it  is  of  a  quality  in  its  celebrities  which  may  well 
carry  dismay  to  any  among  us  presently  intending 
immortality.  Shall  we,  one  day,  we  who  are  now  in 
the  rich  and  full  enjoyment  of  our  far-reaching  fame, 
affect  the  imagination  of  posterity  as  these  phantoms 
of  the  past  affect  ours?  Shall  we,  too,  appear  in  some 
pale  limbo  of  unimportance  as  thin  and  faded  as  "  John 
Inman,  the  getter-up  of  innumerable  things  for  the 
annuals  and  magazines/'  or  as  Dr.  Rufus  Griswold, 
supposed  for  picturesque  purposes  to  be  "stalking 

226 


AESTHETIC  NEW  YORK  FIFTY- ODD  YEARS   AGO 

about  with  an  immense  quarto  volume  under  his  arm 
...  an  early  copy  of  his  forthcoming  Female  Poets 
of  America  " ;  or  as  Lewis  Gaylord  Clark,  the  "  sunny- 
faced,  smiling"  editor  of  the  Knickerbocker  Maga 
zine,  "  who  don't  look  as  if  the  Ink-Fiend  had  ever 
heard  of  him,"  as  he  stands  up  to  dance  a  polka  with 
"a  demure  lady  who  has  evidently  spilled  the  ink 
stand  over  her  dress";  or  as  "the  stately  Mrs.  Seba 
Smith,  bending  aristocratically  over  the  centre-table, 
and  talking  in  a  bright,  cold,  steady  stream,  like  an 
antique  fountain  by  moonlight";  or  as  "the  spiritual 
and  dainty  Fanny  Osgood,  clapping  her  hands  and 
crowing  like  a  baby/'  where  she  sits  "nestled  under 
a  shawl  of  heraldic  devices,  like  a  bird  escaped  from 
its  cage";  or  as  Margaret  Fuller,  "her  large,  gray 
eyes  lamping  inspiration,  and  her  thin,  quivering 
lip  prophesying  like  a  Pythoness"? 

I  hope  not;  I  earnestly  hope  not.  Whatever  I  said 
at  the  outset,  affirming  the  persistent  equality  of  New 
York  characteristics  and  circumstances,  I  wish  to  take 
back  at  this  point ;  and  I  wish  to  warn  malign  foreign 
observers,  of  the  sort  who  have  so  often  refused  to  see 
us  as  we  see  ourselves,  that  they  must  not  expect  to 
find  us  now  grouped  in  the  taste  of  1849.  Possibly 
it  was  not  so  much  the  taste  of  1849  as  the  author  of 
New  York  in  Slices  would  have  us  believe;  and  per 
haps  any  one  who  trusted  his  pictures  of  life  among 
us  otherwise  would  be  deceived  by  a  parity  of  the  spirit 
in  which  they  are  portrayed  with  that  of  our  modern 
"society  journalism/' 


FROM  NEW  YORK  INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 

HPHERE  is,  of  course,  almost  a  world's  difference 
1  between  England  and  the  Continent  anywhere; 
but  I  do  not  recall  just  now  any  transition  between 
Continental  countries  which  involves  a  more  distinct 
change  in  the  superficial  aspect  of  things  than  the  pas 
sage  from  the  Middle  States  into  New  England.  It  is 
all  American,  but  American  of  diverse  ideals ;  and  you 
are  hardly  over  the  border  before  you  are  sensible  of 
diverse  effects,  which  are  the  more  apparent  to  you 
the  more  American  you  are.  If  you  want  the  con 
trast  at  its  sharpest  you  had  better  leave  New  York 
on  a  Sound  boat;  for  then  you  sleep  out  of  the  Middle 
State  civilization  and  wake  into  the  civilization  of 
New  England,  which  seems  to  give  its  stamp  to  nature 
herself.  As  to  man,  he  takes  it  whether  native  or 
alien;  and  if  he  is  foreign-born  it  marks  him  another 
Irishman,  Italian,  Canadian,  Jew,  or  negro  from  his 
brother  in  any  other  part  of  the  United  States. 


When  you  have  a  theory  of  any  kind,  proofs  of  it  are 
apt  to  seek  you  out,  and  I,  who  am  rather  fond  of  my 
faith  in  New  England's  influence  of  this  sort,  had  as 
pretty  an  instance  of  it  the  day  after  my  arrival  as  I 
could  wish.  A  colored  brother  of  Massachusetts  birth, 
as  black  as  a  man  can  well  be,  and  of  a  merely  an- 

228 


FROM   NEW  YORK   INTO   NEW  ENGLAND 

thropoidal  profile,  was  driving  me  along  shore  in  search 
of  a  sea-side  hotel  when  we  came  upon  a  weak-minded 
young  chicken  in  the  road.  The  natural  expecta 
tion  is  that  any  chicken  in  these  circumstances  will 
wait  for  your  vehicle,  and  then  fly  up  before  it  with  a 
loud  screech;  but  this  chicken  may  have  been  over 
come  by  the  heat  (it  was  a  land  breeze  and  it  drew  like 
the  breath  of  a  furnace  over  the  hay-cocks  and  the 
clover),  or  it  may  have  mistimed  the  wheel,  which 
passed  over  its  head  and  left  it  to  flop  a  moment  in  the 
dust  and  then  fall  still.  The  poor  little  tragedy  was 
sufficiently  distressful  to  me,  but  I  bore  it  well,  com 
pared  with  my  driver.  He  could  hardly  stop  lamenting 
it;  and  when  presently  we  met  a  young  farmer,  he 
pulled  up.  "  You  goin'  past  Jim  Marden's?"  "  Yes/' 
"  Well,  I  wish  you'd  tell  him  I  just  run  over  a  chicken 
of  his,  and  I  killed  it,  I  guess.  I  guess  it  was  a  pretty 
big  one."  "Oh  no/'  I  put  in,  "it  was  only  a  broiler. 
What  do  you  think  it  was  worth?"  I  took  out  some 
money,  and  the  farmer  noted  the  largest  coin  in  my 
hand;  "About  half  a  dollar,  I  guess."  On  this  I  put 
it  all  back  in  my  pocket,  and  then  he  said,  "Well,  if 
a  chicken  don't  know  enough  to  get  out  of  the  road, 
I  guess  you  ain't  to  blame."  I  expressed  that  this  was 
my  own  view  of  the  case,  and  we  drove  on.  When  we 
parted  I  gave  the  half-dollar  to  my  driver,  and  begged 
him  not  to  let  the  owner  of  the  chicken  come  on  me  for 
damages;  and  though  he  chuckled  his  pleasure  in  the 
joke,  I  could  see  that  he  was  still  unhappy,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  he  ha's  that  pullet  on  his  conscience  yet, 
unless  he  has  paid  for  it.  He  was  of  a  race  which  else 
where  has  so  immemorially  plundered  hen-roosts  that 
chickens  are  as  free  to  it  as  the  air  it  breathes,  without 
any  conceivable  taint  of  private  ownership.  But  the 
spirit  of  New  England  had  so  deeply  entered  into  him 
that  the  imbecile  broiler  of  another,  slain  by  pure  ac- 

229 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

cident  and  b3^  its  own  contributory  negligence,  was 
saddening  him,  while  I  was  off  in  my  train  without  a 
pang  for  the  owner  and  with  only  an  agreeable  pathos 
for  the  pullet. 

II 

The  instance  is  perhaps  extreme;  and,  at  any  rate, 
it  has  carried  me  in  a  psychological  direction  away 
from  the  simpler  differences  which  I  meant  to  note  in 
New  England.  They  were  evident  as  soon  as  our 
train  began  to  run  from  the  steamboat  landing  into 
the  country,  and  they  have  intensified,  if  they  have  not 
multiplied,  themselves  as  I  have  penetrated  deeper 
and  deeper  into  the  beautiful  region.  The  land  is 
poorer  than  the  land  to  the  southward — one  sees  that 
at  once ;  the  soil  is  thin,  and  often  so  thickly  burdened 
with  granite  bowlders  that  it  could  never  have  borne 
any  other  crop  since  the  first  Puritans,  or  Pilgrims, 
cut  away  the  primeval  woods  and  betrayed  its  hope 
less  sterility  to  the  light.  But  wherever  you  come  to 
a  farm-house,  whether  standing  alone  or  in  one  of  the 
village  groups  that  New  England  farm-houses  have 
always  liked  to  gather  themselves  into,  it  is  of  a  neat 
ness  that  brings  despair,  and  of  a  repair  that  ought  to 
bring  shame  to  the  beholder  from  more  easy-going 
conditions.  Everything  is  kept  up  with  a  strenuous 
virtue  that  imparts  an  air  of  self-respect  to  the  land 
scape,  which  the  bleaching  and  blackening  stone 
walls,  wandering  over  the  hill-slopes,  divide  into  wood 
lots  of  white  birch  and  pine,  stony  pastures,  and 
little  patches  of  potatoes  and  corn.  The  mowing- 
lands  alone  are  rich;  and  if  the  New  England  year 
is  in  the  glory  of  the  latest  June,  the  breath  of  the 
clover  blows  honey  -  sweet  into  the  car  windows, 
and  the  fragrance  of  the  new  -  cut  hay  rises  hot 

230 


FROM  NEW  YORK  INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 

from  the  heavy  swaths  that  seem  to  smoke  in  the 
sun. 

We  have  struck  a  hot  spell,  one  of  those  torrid  moods 
of  continental  weather  which  we  have  telegraphed  us 
ahead  to  heighten  our  suffering  by  anticipation.  But 
the  farmsteads  and  village  houses  are  safe  in  the  shade 
of  their  sheltering  trees  amid  the  fluctuation  of  the 
grass  that  grows  so  tall  about  them  that  the  June  roses 
have  to  strain  upward  to  get  themselves  free  of  it.  Be 
hind  each  dwelling  is  a  billowy  mass  of  orchard,  and 
before  it  the  Gothic  archway  of  the  elms  stretches 
above  the  quiet  street.  There  is  no  tree  in  the  world 
so  full  of  sentiment  as  the  American  elm,  and  it  is  no 
where  so  graceful  as  in  these  New  England  villages, 
which  are  themselves,  I  think,  the  prettiest  and  whole- 
somest  of  mortal  sojourns.  By  a  happy  instinct, 
their  wooden  houses  are  all  painted  white,  to  a  marble 
effect  that  suits  our  meridional  sky,  and  the  contrast 
of  their  dark-green  shutters  is  deliciously  refreshing. 
There  was  an  evil  hour,  the  terrible  moment  of  the 
aesthetic  revival  now  happily  past,  when  white  walls 
and  green  blinds  were  thought  in  bad  taste,  and  the 
village  houses  were  often  tinged  a  dreary  ground  color, 
or  a  doleful  olive,  or  a  gloomy  red,  but  now  they  have 
returned  to  their  earlier  love.  Not  the  first  love;  that 
was  a  pale  buff  with  white  trim;  but  I  doubt  if  it  were 
good  for  all  kinds  of  village  houses;  the  eye  rather 
demands  the  white.  The  pale  buff  does  very  well  for 
large  colonial  mansions,  like  Lowell's  or  Longfellow's 
in  Cambridge ;  but  when  you  come,  say,  to  see  the  great 
square  houses  built  in  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire, 
early  in  this  century,  and  painted  white,  you  find  that 
white,  after  all,  is  the  thing  for  our  climate,  even  in 
the  towns. 

In  such  a  village  as  my  colored  brother  drove  me 
through  on  the  way  to  the  beach  it  was  of  an  absolute 

231 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

fitness ;  and  I  wish  I  could  convey  a  due  sense  of  the 
exquisite  keeping  of  the  place.  Each  white  house 
was  more  or  less  closely  belted  in  with  a  white  fence, 
of  panels  or  pickets;  the  grassy  door-yards  glowed 
with  flowers,  and  often  a  climbing  rose  embowered 
the  door-way  with  its  bloom.  Away  backward  or 
sidewise  stretched  the  woodshed  from  the  dwelling 
to  the  barn,  and  shut  the  whole  under  one  cover;  the 
turf  grew  to  the  wheel-tracks  of  the  road-way,  over 
which  the  elms  rose  and  drooped;  and  from  one  end 
of  the  village  to  the  other  you  could  not,  as  the  saying 
is,  find  a  stone  to  throw  at  a  dog.  I  know  Holland; 
I  have  seen  the  wives  of  Scheveningen  scrubbing  up 
for  Sunday  to  the  very  middle  of  their  brick  streets, 
but  I  doubt  if  Dutch  cleanliness  goes  so  far  without, 
or  comes  from  so  deep  a  scruple  within,  as  the  cleanli 
ness  of  New  England.  I  felt  so  keenly  the  feminine 
quality  of  its  motive  as  I  passed  through  that  village, 
that  I  think  if  I  had  dropped  so  much  as  a  piece  of  pa 
per  in  the  street  I  must  have  knocked  at  the  first  door 
and  begged  the  lady  of  the  house  (who  would  have 
opened  it  in  person  after  wiping  her  hands  from  her 
work,  taking  off  her  apron,  and  giving  a  glance  at 
herself  in  the  mirror  and  at  me  through  the  window- 
blind)  to  report  me  to  the  selectmen  in  the  interest  of 
good  morals. 

Ill 

I  did  not  know  at  once  quite  how  to  reconcile  the 
present  foulness  of  the  New  England  capital  with  the 
fairness  of  the  New  England  country;  and  I  am  still 
somewhat  embarrassed  to  own  that  after  New  York 
(even  under  the  relaxing  rule  of  Tammany)  Boston 
seemed  very  dirty  when  we  arrived  there.  At  best  I 
was  never  more  than  a  naturalized  Bostonian;  but  it 

232 


FROM   NEW  YORK   INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 

used  to  give  me  great  pleasure — so  penetratingly  does 
the  place  qualify  even  the  sojourning  Westerner — to 
think  of  the  defect  of  New  York  in  the  virtue  that  is 
next  to  godliness;  and  now  I  had  to  hang  my  head 
for  shame  at  the  mortifying  contrast  of  the  Boston 
streets  to  the  well-swept  asphalt  which  I  had  left  frying 
in  the  New  York  sun  the  afternoon  before.  Later, 
however,  when  I  began  to  meet  the  sort  of  Boston  faces 
I  remembered  so  well  —  good,  just,  pure,  but  set  and 
severe,  with  their  look  of  challenge,  of  interrogation, 
almost  of  reproof — they  not  only  ignored  the  disgrace 
ful  untidiness  of  the  streets,  but  they  convinced  me  of 
a  state  of  transition  which  would  leave  the  place  swept 
and  garnished  behind  it;  and  comforted  me  against 
the  litter  of  the  winding  thoroughfares  and  narrow 
lanes,  where  the  dust  had  blown  up  against  the  brick 
walls,  and  seemed  permanently  to  have  smutched  and 
discolored  them. 

In  New  York  you  see  the  American  face  as  Europe 
characterizes  it ;  in  Boston  you  see  it  as  it  characterizes 
Europe;  and  it  is  in  Boston  that  you  can  best  imagine 
the  strenuous  grapple  of  the  native  forces  which  all 
alien  things  must  yield  to  till  they  take  the  American 
cast.  It  is  almost  dismaying,  that  physiognomy,  be 
fore  it  familiarizes  itself  anew;  and  in  the  brief  first 
moment  while  it  is  yet  objective,  you  ransack  your 
conscience  for  any  sins  you  may  have  committed  in 
your  absence  from  it  and  make  ready  to  do  penance 
for  them.  I  felt  almost  as  if  I  had  brought  the  dirty 
streets  with  me,  and  were  guilty  of  having  left  them 
lying  about,  so  impossible  were  they  with  reference 
to  the  Boston  face. 

It  is  a  face  that  expresses  care,  even  to  the  point  of 
anxiety,  and  it  looked  into  the  window  of  our  carriage 
with  the  serious  eyes  of  our  elderly  hackman  to  make 
perfectly  sure  of  our  destination  before  we  drove  away 

233 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

from  the  station.  It  was  a  little  rigorous  with  us,  as 
requiring  us  to  have  a  clear  mind;  but  it  was  not  un 
friendly,  not  unkind,  and  it  was  patient  from  long 
experience.  In  New  York  there  are  no  elderly  hack- 
men  ;  but  in  Boston  they  abound,  and  I  cannot  believe 
they  would  be  capable  of  bad  faith  with  travellers.  In 
fact,  I  doubt  if  this  class  is  anywhere  as  predatory  as 
it  is  painted ;  but  in  Boston  it  appears  to  have  the  pub 
lic  honor  in  its  keeping.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  was 
less  mature,  less  self -respectful  in  Portsmouth,  where 
we  were  next  to  arrive;  more  so  it  could  not  be;  an 
equal  sense  of  safety,  of  ease,  began  with  it  in  both 
places,  and  all  through  New  England  it  is  of  native 
birth,  while  in  New  York  it  is  composed  of  men  of  many 
nations,  with  a  weight  in  numbers  towards  the  Celtic 
strain.  The  prevalence  of  the  native  in  New  Eng 
land  helps  you  sensibly  to  realize  from  the  first  mo 
ment  that  here  you  are  in  America  as  the  first  Amer 
icans  imagined  and  meant  it;  and  nowhere  in  New 
England  is  the  original  tradition  more  purely  kept 
than  in  the  beautiful  old  seaport  of  New  Hampshire. 
In  fact,  without  being  quite  prepared  to  defend  a  thesis 
to  this  effect,  I  believe  that  Portsmouth  is  pre-emi 
nently  American,  and  in  this  it  differs  from  Newbury- 
port  and  from  Salem,  which  have  suffered  from  differ 
ent  causes  an  equal  commercial  decline,  and,  though 
among  the  earliest  of  the  great  Puritan  towns  after 
Boston,  are  now  largely  made  up  of  aliens  in  race  and 
religion;  these  are  actually  the  majority,  I  believe,  in 
Newburyport. 

IV 

The  adversity  of  Portsmouth  began  early  in  the 
century,  but  before  that  time  she  had  prospered  so 
greatly  that  her  merchant  princes  were  able  to  build 

234 


FROM  NEW  YORK  INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 

themselves  wooden  palaces  with  white  walls  and  green 
shutters,  of  a  grandeur  and  beauty  unmatched  else 
where  in  the  country.  I  do  not  know  what  architect 
had  his  way  with  them,  though  his  name  is  richly 
worth  remembrance,  but  they  let  him  make  them  hab 
itations  of  such  graceful  proportion  and  of  such  deli 
cate  ornament  that  they  have  become  shrines  of  pious 
pilgrimage  with  the  young  architects  of  our  day  who 
hope  to  house  our  well-to-do  people  fitly  in  country 
or  suburbs.  The  decoration  is  oftenest  spent  on  a 
porch  or  portal,  or  a  frieze  of  peculiar  refinement;  or 
perhaps  it  feels  its  way  to  the  carven  casements  or 
to  the  delicate  iron-work  of  the  transoms;  the  rest  is 
a  simplicity  and  a  faultless  propriety  of  form  in  the 
stately  mansions  which  stand  under  the  arching  elms, 
with  their  gardens  sloping,  or  dropping  by  easy  ter 
races  behind  them  to  the  river,  or  to  the  borders  of 
other  pleasances.  They  are  all  of  wood,  except  for 
the  granite  foundations  and  doorsteps,  but  the  stout 
edifices  rarely  sway  out  of  the  true  line  given  them, 
and  they  look  as  if  they  might  keep  it  yet  another 
century. 

Between  them,  in  the  sun-shotten  shade,  lie  the 
quiet  streets,  whose  gravelled  stretch  is  probably  never 
cleaned  because  it  never  needs  cleaning.  Even  the 
business  streets,  and  the  quaint  square  which  gives 
the  most  American  of  towns  an  air  so  foreign  and 
Old  Worldly,  look  as  if  the  wind  and  rain  alone  cared 
for  them ;  but  they  are  not  foul,  and  the  narrower  ave 
nues,  where  the  smaller  houses  of  gray,  unpainted 
wood  crowd  each  other,  flush  upon  the  pavements, 
towards  the  water -side,  are  doubtless  unvisited  by 
the  hoe  or  broom,  and  must  be  kept  clean  by  a  New 
England  conscience  against  getting  them  untidy. 

When  you  get  to  the  river-side  there  is  one  stretch 
of  narrow,  high-shouldered  warehouses  which  recall 

235 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

Holland,  especially  in  a  few  with  their  gables  broken 
in  steps,  after  the  Dutch  fashion.  These,  with  their 
mouldering  piers  and  grass-grown  wharves,  have  their 
pathos,  and  the  whole  place  embodies  in  its  architecture 
an  interesting  record  of  the  past,  from  the  time  when 
the  homesick  exiles  huddled  close  to  the  water's  edge 
till  the  period  of  post-colonial  prosperity,  when  proud 
merchants  and  opulent  captains  set  their  vast  square 
houses  each  in  its  handsome  space  of  gardened  ground. 
My  adjectives  might  mislead  as  to  size,  but  they 
could  not  as  to  beauty,  and  I  seek  in  vain  for  those 
that  can  duly  impart  the  peculiar  charm  of  the  town. 
Portsmouth  still  awaits  her  novelist;  he  will  find  a 
rich  field  when  he  comes;  and  I  hope  he  will  come  of 
the  right  sex,  for  it  needs  some  minute  and  subtle 
feminine  skill,  like  that  of  Jane  Austen,  to  express  a 
fit  sense  of  its  life  in  the  past.  Of  its  life  in  the  pres 
ent  I  know  nothing.  I  could  only  go  by  those  de 
lightful,  silent  houses,  and  sigh  my  longing  soul  into 
their  dim  interiors.  When  now  and  then  a  young 
shape  in  summer  silk,  or  a  group  of  young  shapes 
in  diaphanous  muslin,  fluttered  out  of  them,  I  was 
no  wiser;  and  doubtless  my  elderly  fancy  would  have 
been  unable  to  deal  with  what  went  on  in  them.  Some 
girl  of  those  flitting  through  the  warm,  odorous  twi 
light  must  become  the  creative  historian  of  the  place; 
I  can  at  least  imagine  a  Jane  Austen  now  growing  up 
in  Portsmouth. 


If  Miss  Jewett  were  of  a  little  longer  breath  than 
she  has  yet  shown  herself  in  fiction,  I  might  say  the 
Jane  Austen  of  Portsmouth  was  already  with  us,  and 
had  merely  not  yet  begun  to  deal  with  its  precious  ma 
terial.  One  day  when  we  crossed  the  Piscataqua  from 

236 


FROM  NEW  YORK   INTO  NEW  ENGLAND 

New  Hampshire  into  Maine,  and  took  the  trolley-line 
for  a  run  along  through  the  lovely  coast  country,  we 
suddenly  found  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  her  own 
people,  who  are  a  little  different  sort  of  New-England- 
ers  from  those  of  Miss  Wilkins.  They  began  to  flock 
into  the  car,  young  maidens  and  old,  mothers  and 
grandmothers,  and  nice  boys  and  girls,  with  a  very, 
very  few  farmer  youth  of  marriageable  age,  and  more 
rustic  and  seafaring  elders  long  past  it,  all  in  the  Sun 
day  best  which  they  had  worn  to  the  graduation  exer 
cises  at  the  High  School,  where  we  took  them  mostly 
up.  The  womenkind  were  in  a  nervous  twitter  of  talk 
and  laughter,  and  the  men  tolerantly  gay  beyond  their 
wont,  "passing  the  time  of  day"  with  one  another,  and 
helping  the  more  tumultuous  sex  to  get  settled  in  the 
overcrowded  open  car.  They  courteously  made  room 
for  one  another,  and  let  the  children  stand  between 
their  knees,  or  took  them  in  their  laps,  with  that  un 
failing  American  kindness  which  I  am  prouder  of  than 
the  American  valor  in  battle,  observing  in  all  that 
American  decorum  which  is  no  bad  thing  either.  We 
had  chanced  upon  the  high  and  mighty  occasion  of 
the  neighborhood  year,  when  people  might  well  have 
been  a  little  off  their  balance,  but  there  was  not  a  bois 
terous  note  in  the  subdued  affair.  As  we  passed  the 
school-house  door,  three  dear,  pretty  maids  in  white 
gowns  and  white  slippers  stood  on  the  steps  and  gently 
smiled  upon  our  company.  One  could  see  that  they 
were  inwardly  glowing  and  thrilling  with  the  excite 
ment  of  their  graduation,  but  were  controlling  their 
emotions  to  a  calm  worthy  of  the  august  event,  so  that 
no  one  might  ever  have  it  to  say  that  they  had  ap 
peared  silly. 

The  car  swept  on,  and  stopped  to  set  down  passengers 
at  their  doors  or  gates,  where  they  severally  left  it,  with 
an  easy  air  as  of  private  ownership,  into  some  sense 

237 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

of  which  the  trolley  promptly  flatters  people  along  its 
obliging  lines.  One  comfortable  matron,  in  a  cinna 
mon  silk,  was  just  such  a  figure  as  that  in  the  Miss 
Wilkins's  story  where  the  bridegroom  fails  to  come  on 
the  wedding-day;  but,  as  I  say,  they  made  me  think 
more  of  Miss  Jewett's  people.  The  shore  folk  and  the 
Down-Easters  are  specifically  hers ;  and  these  were  just 
such  as  might  have  belonged  in  The  Country  of  the 
Pointed  Firs,  or  Sister  Wisby's  Courtship,  or  Dulham 
Ladies,  or  An  Autumn  Ramble,  or  twenty  other  en 
trancing  tales.  Sometimes  one  of  them  would  try 
her  front  door,  and  then,  with  a  bridling  toss  of  the 
head,  express  that  she  had  forgotten  locking  it,  and 
slip  round  to  the  kitchen;  but  most  of  the  ladies  made 
their  way  back  at  once  between  the  roses  and  syringas 
of  their  grassy  door-yards,  which  were  as  neat  and  prim 
as  their  own  persons,  or  the  best  chamber  in  their 
white-walled,  green-shuttered,  story-and-a-half  house, 
and  as  perfectly  kept  as  the  very  kitchen  itself. 


VI 

The  trolley- line  had  been  opened  only  since  the  last 
September,  but  in  an  effect  of  familiar  use  it  was  as 
if  it  had  always  been  there,  and  it  climbed  and  crooked 
and  clambered  about  with  the  easy  freedom  of  the 
country  road  which  it  followed.  It  is  a  land  of  low 
hills,  broken  by  frequent  reaches  of  the  sea,  and  it 
is  most  amusing,  most  amazing,  to  see  how  frankly 
the  trolley-car  takes  and  overcomes  its  difficulties.  It 
scrambles  up  and  down  the  little  steeps  like  a  cat,  and 
whisks  round  a  sharp  and  sudden  curve  with  a  feline 
screech,  broadening  into  a  loud  caterwaul  as  it  darts 
over  the  estuaries  on  its  trestles.  Its  course  does  not 
lack  excitement,  and  I  suppose  it  does  not  lack  danger ; 

238 


k 


FROM   NEW  YORK  INTO   NEW  ENGLAND 

but  as  yet  there  have  been  no  accidents,  and  it  is  not 
so  disfiguring  as  one  would  think.  The  landscape 
has  already  accepted  it,  and  is  making  the  best  of  it; 
and  to  the  country  people  it  is  an  inestimable  conven 
ience.  It  passes  everybody's  front  door  or  back  door, 
and  the  farmers  can  get  themselves  or  their  produce 
(for  it  runs  an  express  car)  into  Portsmouth  in  an  hour, 
twice  an  hour,  all  day  long.  In  summer  the  cars  are 
open,  with  transverse  seats,  and  stout  curtains  that 
quite  shut  out  a  squall  of  wind  or  rain.  In  winter  the 
cars  are  closed,  and  heated  by  electricity.  The  young 
motorman  whom  I  spoke  with,  while  we  waited  on  a 
siding  to  let  a  car  from  the  opposite  direction  get  by, 
told  me  that  he  was  "ight  out  in  a  blizzard  last  win 
ter,  and  passed  the  m&iit  in  a  snow-drift.  "  But  the 
cah  was  so  wa'm,  I  neva  suff'ed  a  mite. " 

"Well,"  I  summarized,  "it  must  be  a  great  advan 
tage  to  all  the  people  along  the  line/' 

"Well,  you  wouldn't  'a'  thought  so,  from  the  kick 
they  made/' 

"I  suppose  the  cottagers" — the  summer  colony — 
"didn't  like  the  noise/' 

"Oh  yes;  that's  what  I  mean.  The's  whe'  the  kick 
was.  The  natives  like  it.  I  guess  the  summa  folks 
'11  like  it,  too." 

He  looked  round  at  me  with  enjoyment  of  his  joke 
in  his  eye,  for  we  both  understood  that  the  summer 
folks  could  not  help  themselves,  and  must  bow  to  the 
will  of  the  majority. 


THE   STANDARD   HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT 
COMPANY 

MY  friend  came  in  the  other  day,  before  we  had 
left  town,  and  looked  round  at  the  appointments 
of  the  room  in  their  summer  shrouds,  and  said,  with  a 
faint  sigh,  "I  see  you  have  had  the  eternal-womanly 
with  you,  too." 


"Isn't  the  eternal- womanly  everywhere?  What  has 
happened  to  you?"  I  asked. 

"  I  wish  you  would  come  to  my  house  and  see.  Every 
rug  has  been  up  for  a  month,  and  we  have  been  living 
on  bare  floors.  Everything  that  could  be  tied  up  has 
been  tied  up,  everything  that  could  be  sewed  up  has 
been  sewed  up.  Everything  that  could  be  moth-balled 
and  put  away  in  chests  has  been  moth-balled  and  put 
away.  Everything  that  could  be  taken  down  has  been 
taken  down.  Bags  with  draw-strings  at  their  necks 
have  been  pulled  over  the  chandeliers  and  tied.  The 
pictures  have  been  hidden  in  cheese-cloth,  and  the  mir 
rors  veiled  in  gauze  so  that  I  cannot  see  my  own  mis 
erable  face  anywhere." 

"Come!     That's  something." 

"Yes,  it's  something.  But  I  have  been  thinking 
this  matter  over  very  seriously,  and  I  believe  it  is  go 
ing  from  bad  to  worse.  I  have  heard  praises  of  the 
thorough  housekeeping  of  our  grandmothers,  but  the 

240 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

housekeeping  of  their  granddaughters  is  a  thousand 
times  more  intense/' 

"Do  you  really  believe  that?"  I  asked.  "And  if 
you  do,  what  of  it?" 

"  Simply  this,  that  if  we  don't  put  a  stop  to  it,  at  the 
gait  it's  going,  it  will  put  a  stop  to  the  eternal- womanly. " 

"I  suppose  we  should  hate  that." 

"  Yes,  it  would  be  bad.  It  would  be  very  bad ;  and  I 
have  been  turning  the  matter  over  in  my  mind,  and 
studying  out  a  remedy." 

"  The  highest  type  of  philosopher  turns  a  thing  over 
in  his  mind  and  lets  some  one  else  study  out  a  remedy." 

"Yes,  I  know.  I  feel  that  I  may  be  wrong  in  my 
processes,  but  I  am  sure  that  I  am  right  in  my  results. 
The  reason  why  our  grandmothers  could  be  such  good 
housekeepers  without  danger  of  putting  a  stop  to  the 
eternal- womanly  was  that  they  had  so  few  things  to 
look  after  in  their  houses.  Life  was  indefinitely  sim 
pler  with  them.  But  the  modern  improvements,  as 
we  call  them,  have  multiplied  the  cares  of  housekeep 
ing  without  subtracting  its  burdens,  as  they  were  ex 
pected  to  do.  Every  novel  convenience  and  comfort, 
every  article  of  beauty  and  luxury,  every  means  of  re 
finement  and  enjoyment  in  our  houses,  has  been  so 
much  added  to  the  burdens  of  housekeeping,  and  the 
granddaughters  have  inherited  from  the  grandmothers 
an  undiminished  conscience  against  rust  and  the  moth, 
which  will  not  suffer  them  to  forget  the  least  duty  they 
owe  to  the  naughtiest  of  their  superfluities." 

"Yes,  I  see  what  you  mean,"  I  said.  This  is  what 
one  usually  says  when  one  does  not  quite  know  what 
another  is  driving  at ;  but  in  this  case  I  really  did  know, 
or  thought  I  did.  "That  survival  of  the  conscience 
is  a  very  curious  thing,  especially  in  our  eternal-wom 
anly.  I  suppose  that  the  North  American  conscience 
was  evolved  from  the  rudimental  European  conscience 
««  241 


LITERATURE    AND    LIFE 

during  the  first  centuries  of  struggle  here,  and  was 
more  or  less  religious  and  economical  in  its  origin. 
But  with  the  advance  of  wealth  and  the  decay  of  faith 
among  us,  the  conscience  seems  to  be  simply  con 
scientious,  or,  if  it  is  otherwise,  it  is  social.  The  eter 
nal-womanly  continues  along  the  old  lines  of  house 
keeping  from  an  atavistic  impulse,  and  no  one  woman 
can  stop  because  all  the  other  women  are  going  on. 
It  is  something  in  the  air,  or  something  in  the  blood. 
Perhaps  it  is  something  in  both." 

"Yes,"  said  my  friend,  quite  as  I  had  said  already, 
"  I  see  what  you  mean.  But  I  think  it  is  in  the  air  more 
than  in  the  blood.  I  was  in  Paris,  about  this  time  last 
year,  perhaps  because  I  was  the  only  thing  in  my 
house  that  had  not  been  swathed  in  cheese-cloth,  or 
tied  up  in  a  bag  with  draw-strings,  or  rolled  up  with 
moth-balls  and  put  away  in  chests.  At  any  rate,  I 
was  there.  One  day  I  left  my  wife  in  New  York  care 
fully  tagging  three  worn-out  feather  dusters,  and  put 
ting  them  into  a  pillow-case,  and  tagging  it,  and  put 
ting  the  pillow-case  into  a  camphorated  self-sealing 
paper  sack,  and  tagging  it;  and  another  day  I  was  in 
Paris,  dining  at  the  house  of  a  lady  whom  I  asked  how 
she  managed  with  the  things  in  her  house  when  she 
went  into  the  country  for  the  summer.  'Leave  them 
/  just  as  they  are/  she  said.  "But  what  about  the  dust 
and  the  moths,  and  the  rust  and  the  tarnish?'  She 
said,  '  Why,  the  things  would  have  to  be  all  gone  over 
when  I  came  back  in  the  autumn,  anyway,  and  why 
should  I  give  myself  double  trouble?'  I  asked  her  if 
she  didn't  even  roll  anything  up  and  put  it  away  in 
closets,  and  she  said:  'Oh,  you  mean  that  old  Amer- 
ican  horror  of  getting  ready  to  go  away.  I  used  to  go 
through  all  that  at  home,  too,  but  I  shouldn't  dream 
of  it  here.  In  the  first  place,  there  are  no  closets  in  the 
house,  and  I  couldn't  put  anything  away  if  I  wanted 

242 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

to.  And  really  nothing  happens.  I  scatter  some 
Persian  powder  along  the  edges  of  things,  and  under 
the  lower  shelves,  and  in  the  dim  corners,  and  I  pull 
down  the  shades.  When  I  come  back  in  the  fall  I 
have  the  powder  swept  out,  and  the  shades  pulled  up, 
and  begin  living  again.  Suppose  a  little  dust  has 
got  in,  and  the  moths  have  nibbled  a  little  here  and 
there?  The  whole  damage  would  not  amount  to  half 
the  cost  of  putting  everything  away  and  taking  every 
thing  out,  not  to  speak  of  the  weeks  of  discomfort,  and 
the  wear  and  tear  of  spirit.  No,  thank  goodness!  I 
left  American  housekeeping  in  America. '  I  asked  her : 
'  But  if  you  went  back?'  and  she  gave  a  sigh,  and  said : 
'  I  suppose  I  should  go  back  to  that,  along  with  all  the 
rest.  Everybody  does  it  there. '  So  you  see/'  my  friend 
concluded,  "it's  in  the  air,  rather  than  the  blood." 

"Then  your  famous  specific   is  that  our  eternal- 
womanly  should  go  and  live  in  Paris?" 

"  Oh,  dear,  no ! "  said  my  friend.    "  Nothing  so  drastic  .* 
as  all  that.  Merely  the  extinction  of  household  property. " 

"I  see  what  you   mean,"  I  said.     "But — what  do 
you  mean?" 

"Simply  that  hired  houses,  such  as  most  of  us  live 
in,  shall  all  be  furnished  houses,  and  that  the  landlord 
shall  own  every  stick  in  them,  and  every  appliance  , 
down  to  the  last  spoon  and  ultimate  towel.  There 
must  be  no  compromise,  by  which  the  tenant  agrees 
to  provide  his  own  linen  and  silver;  that  would  neu 
tralize  the  effect  I  intend  by  the  expropriation  of  the 
personal  proprietor,  if  that  says  what  I  mean.  It  must 
be  in  the  lease,  with  severe  penalties  against  the  ten 
ant  in  case  of  violation,  that  the  landlord  is  to  furnish 
everything  in  perfect  order  when  the  tenant  comes 
in,  and  is  to  put  everything  in  perfect  order  when  the 
tenant  goes  out,  and  the  tenant  is  not  to  touch  any 
thing,  to  clean  it,  or  dust  it,  or  roll  it  up  in  moth-balls 

243 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

and  put  it  away  in  chests.  All  is  to  be  so  sacredly 
and  inalienably  the  property  of  the  landlord  that  it 
shall  constitute  a  kind  of  trespass  if  the  tenant  at 
tempts  to  close  the  house  for  the  summer  or  to  open 
it  for  the  winter  in  the  usual  way  that  houses  are  now 
closed  and  opened.  Otherwise  my  scheme  would  be 
measurably  vitiated." 

"I  see  what  you  mean/'  I  murmured.     "Well?" 

"Some  years  ago/'  my  friend  went  on,  "when  we 
came  home  from  Europe,  we  left  our  furniture  in  stor 
age  for  a  time,  while  we  rather  drifted  about,  and  did 
not  settle  anywhere  in  particular.  During  that  in 
terval  my  wife  opened  and  closed  five  furnished  houses 
in  two  years/' 

"And  she  has  lived  to  tell  the  tale?" 

"  She  has  lived  to  tell  it  a  great  many  times.  She 
can  hardly  be  kept  from  telling  it  yet.  But  it  is  my 
belief  that,  although  she  brought  to  the  work  all  the 
anguish  of  a  quickened  conscience,  under  the  influ 
ence  of  the  American  conditions  she  had  returned  to, 
she  suffered  far  less  in  her  encounters  with  either  of 
those  furnished  houses  than  she  now  does  with  our 
own  furniture  when  she  shuts  up  our  house  in  the 
summer,  and  opens  it  for  the  winter.  But  if  there 
had  been  a  clause  in  the  lease,  as  there  should  have 
been,  forbidding  her  to  put  those  houses  in  order  when 
she  left  them,  life  would  have  been  simply  a  rapture. 
Why,  in  Europe  custom  almost  supplies  the  place  of 
statute  in  such  cases,  and  you  come  and  go  so  lightly 
/  in  and  out  of  furnished  houses  that  you  do  not  mind 
taking  them  for  a  month,  or  a  few  weeks.  We  are 
very  far  behind  in  this  matter,  but  I  have  no  doubt 
that  if  we  once  came  to  do  it  on  any  extended  scale 
we  should  do  it,  as  we  do  everything  else  we  attempt, 
more  perfectly  than  any  other  people  in  the  world. 
You  see  what  I  mean?" 

244 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

"I  am  not  sure  that  I  do.     But  go  on." 

"I  would  invert  the  whole  Henry  George  principle, 
and  I  would  tax  personal  property  of  the  household 
kind  so  heavily  that  it  would  necessarily  pass  out  of 
private  hands ;  I  would  make  its  tenure  so  costly  that 
it  would  be  impossible  to  any  but  the  very  rich,  who 
are  also  the  very  wicked,  and  ought  to  suffer/' 

"Oh,  come,  now!" 

"I  refer  you  to  your  Testament.  In  the  end,  all 
household  property  would  pass  into  the  hands  of  the 
state." 

"  Aren't  you  getting  worse  and  worse?" 

"Oh,  I'm  not  supposing  there  won't  be  a  long  inter 
val  when  household  property  will  be  in  the  hands  of 
powerful  monopolies,  and  many  millionaires  will  be 
made  by  letting  it  out  to  middle-class  tenants  like  you 
and  me,  along  with  the  houses  we  hire  of  them.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  there  will  be  a  Standard  House 
hold-Effect  Company,  which  will  extend  its  relations 
to  Europe,  and  get  the  household  effects  of  the  whole 
world  into  its  grasp.  It  will  be  a  fearful  oppression, 
and  we  shall  probably  groan  under  it  for  generations, 
but  it  will  liberate  us  from  our  personal  ownership  of 
them,  and  from  the  far  more  crushing  weight  of  the 
moth-ball.  We  shall  suffer,  but—" 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  I  hastened  to  interrupt  at 
this  point,  "but  these  suggestive  remarks  of  yours 
are  getting  beyond—  Do  you  think  you  could  defer 
the  rest  of  your  incompleted  sentence  for  a  week?" 

"Well,  for  not  more  than  a  week/'  said  my  friend, 
with  an  air  of  discomfort  in  his  arrest. 

n 

"  We  shall  not  suffer  so  much  as  we  do  under  our 
present  system,"  said  my  friend,  completing  his  sen- 

245 


LITERATURE  AND    LIFE 

tence  after  the  interruption  of  a  week.  By  this  time 
we  had  both  left  town,  and  were  taking  up  the  talk 
again  on  the  veranda  of  a  sea-side  hotel.  "As  for 
the  eternal-womanly,  it  will  be  her  salvation  from  her 
self.  When  once  she  is  expropriated  from  her  house 
hold  effects,  and  forbidden  under  severe  penalties  from 
meddling  with  those  of  the  Standard  Household-Effect 
Company,  she  will  begin  to  get  back  her  peace  of  mind, 
and  be  the  same  blessing  she  was  before  she  began 
housekeeping/' 

"That  may  all  very  well  be,"  I  assented,  though  I 
did  not  believe  it,  and  I  found  something  almost  too 
fantastical  in  my  friend's  scheme.  "But  when  we 
are  expropriated  from  all  our  dearest  belongings,  what 
is  to  become  of  our  tender  and  sacred  associations  with 
them?" 

"  What  has  become  of  devotion  to  the  family  gods, 
and  the  worship  of  ancestors?  Once  the  graves  of 
the  dead  were  at  the  door  of  the  living,  so  that  liba 
tions  might  be  conveniently  poured  out  on  them,  and 
the  ground  where  they  lay  was  inalienable  because  it 
was  supposed  to  be  used  by  their  spirits  as  well  as 
their  bodies.  A  man  could  not  sell  the  bones,  because 
he  could  not  sell  the  ghosts,  of  his  kindred.  By-and- 
by,  when  religion  ceased  to  be  domestic  and  became 
social,  and  the  service  of  the  gods  was  carried  on  in 
temples  common  to  all,  it  was  found  that  the  tombs 
of  one's  forefathers  could  be  sold  without  violence  to 
their  spectres.  I  dare  say  it  wouldn't  be  different  in 
the  case  of  our  tender  and  sacred  associations  with 
tables  and  chairs,  pots  and  pans,  beds  and  bedding, 
pictures  and  bric-a-brac.  We  have  only  to  evolve  a 
little  further.  In  fact  we  have  already  evolved  far 
beyond  the  point  that  troubles  you.  Most  people  in 
modern  towns  and  cities  have  changed  their  domiciles 
from  ten  to  twenty  times  during  their  lives,  and  have 

246 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

not  paid  the  slightest  attention  to  the  tender  and  sacred 
associations  connected  with  them.  I  don't  suppose  you 
would  say  that  a  man  has  no  such  associations  with 
the  house  that  has  sheltered  him,  while  he  has  them 
with  the  stuff  that  has  furnished  it?" 

"No,  I  shouldn't  say  that." 

"If  anything,  the  house  should  be  dearer  than  the 
household  gear.  Yet  at  each  remove  we  drag  a  length 
ening  chain  of  tables,  chairs,  side -boards,  portraits, 
landscapes,  bedsteads,  washstands,  stoves,  kitchen 
utensils,  and  bric-a-brac  after  us,  because,  as  my  wife 
says,  we  cannot  bear  to  part  with  them.  At  several 
times  in  our  own  lives  we  have  accumulated  stuff 
enough  to  furnish  two  or  three  houses  and  have  paid 
a  pretty  stiff  house -rent  in  the  form  of  storage  for 
the  overflow.  Why,  I  am  doing  that  very  thing  now! 
Aren't  you?" 

"I  am — in  a  certain  degree/'  I  assented. 

"We  all  are,  we  well-to-do  people,  as  we  think  our 
selves.  Once  my  wife  and  I  revolted  by  a  common 
impulse  against  the  ridiculous  waste  and  slavery  of 
the  thing.  We  went  to  the  storage  warehouse  and 
sent  three  or  four  van-loads  of  the  rubbish  to  the  auc 
tioneer.  Some  of  the  pieces  we  had  not  seen  for  years, 
and  as  each  was  hauled  out  for  us  to  inspect  and  de 
cide  upon,  we  condemned  it  to  the  auction-block  with 
shouts  of  rejoicing.  Tender  and  sacred  associations! 
We  hadn't  had  such  light  hearts  since  we  had  put 
everything  in  storage  and  gone  to  Europe  indefinite 
ly  as  we  had  when  we  left  those  things  to  be  carted 
out  of  our  lives  forever.  Not  one  had  been  a  pleas 
ure  to  us  ;  the  sight  of  every  one  had  been  a  pang. 
All  we  wanted  was  never  to  set  eyes  on  them 
again." 

"I  must  say  you  have  disposed  of  the  tender  and 
sacred  associations  pretty  effectually,  so  far  as  they 

247 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

relate  to  things  in  storage.  But  the  things  that  we 
have  in  daily  use?" 

"It  is  exactly  the  same  with  them.  Why  should 
they  be  more  to  us  than  the  floors  and  walls  of  the 
houses  we  move  in  and  move  out  of  with  no  particu 
lar  pathos?  And  I  think  we  ought  not  to  care  for  them, 
certainly  not  to  the  point  of  letting  them  destroy  our 
eternal-womanly  with  the  anxiety  she  feels  for  them. 
She  is  really  much  more  precious,  if  she  could  but 
realize  it,  than  anything  she  swathes  in  cheese-cloth 
or  wraps  up  with  moth-balls.  The  proof  of  the  fact 
that  the  whole  thing  is  a  piece  of  mere  sentimentality 
is  that  we  may  live  in  a  furnished  house  for  years, 
amid  all  the  accidents  of  birth  and  death,  joy  and  sor 
row,  and  yet  not  form  the  slightest  attachment  to  the 
furniture.  Why  should  we  have  tender  and  sacred 
associations  with  a  thing  we  have  bought,  and  not 
with  a  thing  we  have  hired?" 

"  I  confess,  I  don't  know.  And  do  you  really  think 
we  could  liberate  ourselves  from  our  belongings  if  they 
didn't  belong  to  us?  Wouldn't  the  eternal  -  womanly 
still  keep  putting  them  away  for  summer  and  taking 
them  out  for  winter?" 

"  At  first,  yes,  there  might  be  some  such  mechanical 
action  in  her ;  but  it  would  be  purely  mechanical,  and  it 
would  soon  cease.  When  the  Standard  Household- 
Effect  Company  came  down  on  the  temporal-manly 
with  a  penalty  for  violation  of  the  lease,  the  eternal- 
womanly  would  see  the  folly  of  her  ways  and  stop; 
for  the  eternal  -  womanly  is  essentially  economical, 
whatever  we  say  about  the  dressmaker's  bills;  and 
the  very  futilities  of  putting  away  and  taking  out, 
that  she  now  wears  herself  to  a  thread  with,  are  found 
ed  in  the  instinct  of  saving." 

"But,"  I  asked,  "wouldn't  our  household  belong 
ings  lose  a  good  deal  of  character  if  they  didn't  belong 

248 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

to  us?    Wouldn't  our  domestic  interiors  become  dread 
fully  impersonal?" 

"How  many  houses  now  have  character — person 
ality?  Most  people  let  the  different  dealers  choose 
for  them,  as  it  is.  Why  not  let  the  Standard  House 
hold-Effect  Company,  and  finally  the  state?  I  am 
sure  that  either  would  choose  much  more  wisely  than 
people  choose  for  themselves,  in  the  few  cases  where 
they  even  seem  to  choose  for  themselves.  In  most 
interiors  the  appointments  are  without  fitness,  taste, 
or  sense ;  they  are  the  mere  accretions  of  accident  in 
the  greater  number  of  cases;  where  they  are  the  re 
sult  of  design,  they  are  worse.  I  see  what  you  mean 
by  character  and  personality  in  them.  You  mean 
the  sort  of  madness  that  let  itself  loose  a  few  years 
ago  in  what  was  called  household  art,  and  has  since 
gone  to  make  the  junk-shops  hideous.  Each  of  the 
eternal-womanly  was  supposed  suddenly  to  have  ac 
quired  a  talent  for  decoration  and  a  gift  for  the  selec 
tion  and  arrangement  of  furniture,  and  each  began 
to  stamp  herself  upon  our  interiors.  One  painted  a 
high  -  shouldered  stone  bottle  with  a  stork  and  stood 
it  at  the  right  corner  of  the  mantel  on  a  scarf ;  another 
gilded  the  bottle  and  stood  it  at  the  left  corner,  and 
tied  the  scarf  through  its  handle.  One  knotted  a  ribbon 
around  the  arm  of  a  chair ;  another  knotted  it  around  \ 
the  leg.  In  a  day,  an  hour,  a  moment,  the  chairs  sud 
denly  became  angular,  cushionless,  springless;  and 
the  sofas  were  stood  across  corners,  or  parallel  with 
the  fireplace,  in  slants  expressive  of  the  personality 
of  the  presiding  genius.  The  walls  became  all  frieze 
and  dado;  and  instead  of  the  simple  and  dignified 
ugliness  of  the  impersonal  period  our  interiors  aban 
doned  themselves  to  a  hysterical  chaos,  full  of  character. 
Some  people  had  their  doors  painted  black,  and  the 
daughter  or  mother  of  the  house  then  decorated  them 

249 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

with  morning-glories.  I  saw  such  a  door  in  a  house 
I  looked  at  the  other  day,  thinking  I  might  hire  it. 
The  sight  of  that  black  door  and  its  morning-glories 
made  me  wish  to  turn  aside  and  live  with  the  cattle, 
as  Walt  Whitman  says.  No,  the  less  we  try  to  get 
personality  and  character  into  our  household  effects 
the  more  beautiful  and  interesting  they  will  be.  As 
soon  as  we  put  the  Standard  Household-Effect  Com 
pany  in  possession  and  render  it  a  relentless  monop 
oly,  it  will  corrupt  a  competent  architect  and  decorator 
in  each  of  our  large  towns  and  cities,  and  when  you 
hire  a  new  house  these  will  be  sent  to  advise  with  the 
eternal  -  womanly  concerning  its  appointments,  and 
tell  her  what  she  wants,  and  what  she  will  like;  for 
at  present  the  eternal  womanly,  as  soon  as  she  has 
got  a  thing  she  wants,  begins  to  hate  it.  The  com 
pany's  agents  will  begin  by  convincing  her  that  she 
does  not  need  half  the  things  she  has  lumbered  up  her 
house  with,  and  that  every  useless  thing  is  an  ugly 
thing,  even  in  the  region  of  pure  aesthetics.  I  once 
asked  an  Italian  painter  if  he  did  not  think  a  certain 
nobly  imagined  drawing-room  was  fine,  and  he  said: 
'SI.  Ma  troppa  roba.'  There  were  too  many  rugs, 
tables,  chairs,  sofas,  pictures,  vases,  statues,  chan 
deliers.  Troppa  roba  is  the  vice  of  all  our  household 
furnishing,  and  it  will  be  the  death  of  the  eternal- 
womanly  if  it  is  not  stopped.  But  the  corrupt  agents 
of  a  giant  monopoly  will  teach  the  eternal-womanly 
something  of  the  wise  simplicity  of  the  South,  and 
she  will  end  by  returning  to  the  ideal  of  housekeep 
ing  as  it  prevails  among  the  Latin  races,  whom  it  be 
gan  with,  whom  civilization  began  with.  What  of  a 
harmless,  necessary  moth  or  two,  or  even  a  few 
fleas  ?" 

"That  might  be  all  very  well  as  far  as  furniture 
and  carpets  and  curtains  are  concerned/'  I  said,  "but 

250 


THE  STANDARD  HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT  COMPANY 

surely  you  wouldn't  apply  it  to  pictures  and  objects  of 
art?" 

"  I  would  apply  it  to  them  first  of  all  and  above  all," 
rejoined  my  friend,  hardily.  "Among  all  the  people 
who  buy  and  own  such  things  there  is  not  one  in  a 
thousand  who  has  any  real  taste  or  feeling  for  them, 
and  the  objects  they  choose  are  generally  such  as  can 
only  deprave  and  degrade  them  further.  The  pict 
ures,  statues,  and  vases  supplied  by  the  Standard 
Household-Effect  Company  would  be  selected  by  agents 
with  a  real  sense  of  art,  and  a  knowledge  of  it.  When 
the  house-letting  and  house-furnishing  finally  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  state,  these  things  would  be  lent 
from  the  public  galleries,  or  from  immense  municipal 
stores  for  the  purpose." 

"And  I  suppose  you  would  have  ancestral  portraits 
supplied  along  with  the  other  pictures ?"  I  sneered. 

"Ancestral  portraits,  of  course,"  said  my  friend, 
with  unruffled  temper.  "  So  few  people  have  ances 
tors  of  their  own  that  they  will  be  very  glad  to  have 
ancestral  portraits  chosen  for  them  out  of  the  collec 
tions  of  the  company  or  the  state.  The  agents  of  the 
one,  or  the  officers  of  the  other,  will  study  the  existing 
type  of  family  face,  and  will  select  ancestors  and  an 
cestresses  whose  modelling,  coloring,  and  expression 
agree  with  it,  and  will  keep  in  view  the  race  and  na 
tionality  of  the  family  whose  ancestral  portraits  are 
to  be  supplied,  so  that  there  shall  be  no  chance  of  the 
grossly  improbable  effect  which  ancestral  portraits 
now  have  in  many  cases.  Yes,  I  see  no  flaw  in  the 
scheme,"  my  friend  concluded,  "and  no  difficulty 
that  can't  be  easily  overcome.  We  must  alienate  our 
household  furniture,  and  make  it  so  sensitively  and 
exclusively  the  property  of  some  impersonal  agency 
—company  or  community,  I  don't  care  which — that 
any  care  of  it  shall  be  a  sort  of  crime ;  any  sense  of 

251 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

responsibility  for  its  preservation  a  species  of  incivism 
punishable  by  fine  or  imprisonment.  This,  and  noth 
ing  short  of  it,  will  be  the  salvation  of  the  eternal- 
womanly/' 

"  And  the  perdition  of  something  even  more  precious 
than  that!" 

"  What  can  be  more  precious?" 
/"  Individuality/' 

"My  dear  friend/'  demanded  my  visitor,  who  had 
risen,  and  whom  I  was  gradually  edging  to  the  door, 
"do  you  mean  to  say  there  is  any  individuality  in 
such  things  now?  What  have  we  been  saying  about 
character?" 

"Ah,  I  see  what  you  mean,"  I  said. 


STACCATO   NOTES   OF   A   VANISHED   SUMMER 

MONDAY  afternoon  the  storm  which  had  been 
beating  up  against  the  southeasterly  wind 
nearly  all  day  thickened,  fold  upon  fold,  in  the  north 
west.  The  gale  increased,  and  blackened  the  harbor 
and  whitened  the  open  sea  beyond,  where  sail  after 
sail  appeared  round  the  reef  of  Whaleback  Light,  and 
ran  in  a  wild  scamper  for  the  safe  anchorages  within. 
Since  noon  cautious  coasters  of  all  sorts  had  been 
dropping  in  with  a  casual  air;  the  coal  schooners  and 
barges  had  rocked  and  nodded  knowingly  to  one  an 
other,  with  their  taper  and  truncated  masts,  on  the 
breast  of  the  invisible  swell;  and  the  flock  of  little 
yachts  and  pleasure-boats  which  always  fleck  the 
bay  huddled  together  in  the  safe  waters.  The  craft 
that  came  scurrying  in  just  before  nightfall  were  mack 
erel  seiners  from  Gloucester.  They  were  all  of  one 
graceful  shape  and  one  size;  they  came  with  all  sail 
set,  taking  the  waning  light  like  sunshine  on  their  fly 
ing-jibs,  and  trailing  each  two  dories  behind  them,  with 
their  seines  piled  in  black  heaps  between  the  thwarts. 
As  soon  as  they  came  inside  their  jibs  weakened  and 
fell,  and  the  anchor-chains  rattled  from  their  bows. 
Before  the  dark  hid  them  we  could  have  counted  sixty 
or  seventy  ships  in  the  harbor,  and  as  the  night  fell 
they  improvised  a  little  Venice  under  the  hill  with 
their  lights,  which  twinkled  rhythmically,  like  the 
lamps  in  the  basin  of  St.  Mark,  between  the  Maine 
and  New  Hampshire  coasts. 

253 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

There  was  a  dash  of  rain,  and  we  thought  the  storm 
had  begun;  but  that  ended  it,  as  so  many  times  this 
summer  a  dash  of  rain  has  ended  a  storm.  The  morn 
ing  came  veiled  in  a  fog  that  kept  the  shipping  at  an 
chor  through  the  day ;  but  the  next  night  the  weather 
cleared.  We  woke  to  the  clucking  of  tackle,  and  saw 
the  whole  fleet  standing  dreamily  out  to  sea.  When 
they  were  fairly  gone,  the  summer,  which  had  held 
aloof  in  dismay  of  the  sudden  cold,  seemed  to  return 
and  possess  the  land  again;  and  the  succession  of  sil 
ver  days  and  crystal  nights  resumed  the  tranquil  round 
which  we  thought  had  ceased. 


One  says  of  every  summer,  when  it  is  drawing  near 
its  end,  "There  never  was  such  a  summer";  but  if  the 
summer  is  one  of  those  which  slip  from  the  feeble  hold 
of  elderly  hands,  when  the  days  of  the  years  may  be 
reckoned  with  the  scientific  logic  of  the  insurance 
tables  and  the  sad  conviction  of  the  psalmist,  one  sees 
it  go  with  a  passionate  prescience  of  never  seeing  its 
like  again  such  as  the  younger  witness  cannot  know. 
Each  new  summer  of  the  few  left  must  be  shorter  and 
swifter  than  the  last:  its  Junes  will  be  thirty  days 
long,  and  its  Julys  and  Augusts  thirty-one,  in  com 
pliance  with  the  almanac;  but  the  days  will  be  of  so 
small  a  compass  that  fourteen  of  them  will  rattle  round 
in  a  week  of  the  old  size  like  shrivelled  peas  in  a  pod. 

To  be  sure  they  swell  somewhat  in  the  retrospect, 
like  the  same  peas  put  to  soak;  and  I  am  aware  now 
of  some  June  days  of  those  which  we  first  spent  at 
Kittery  Point  this  year,  which  were  nearly  twenty- 
four  hours  long.  Even  the  days  of  declining  years 
linger  a  little  here,  where  there  is  nothing  to  hurry 

254 


STACCATO  NOTES   OF  A  VANISHED  SUMMER 

them,  and  where  it  is  pleasant  to  loiter,  and  muse  be 
side  the  sea  and  shore,  which  are  so  netted  together 
at  Kittery  Point  that  they  hardly  know  themselves 
apart.  The  days,  whatever  their  length,  are  divided, 
not  into  hours,  but  into  mails.  They  begin,  without 
regard  to  the  sun,  at  eight  o'clock,  when  the  first  mail 
comes  with  a  few  letters  and  papers  which  had  forgot 
ten  themselves  the  night  before.  At  half-past  eleven 
the  great  mid-day  mail  arrives ;  at  four  o'clock  there 
is  another  indifferent  and  scattering  post,  much  like 
that  at  eight  in  the  morning;  and  at  seven  the  last 
mail  arrives  with  the  Boston  evening  papers  and  the 
New  York  morning  papers,  to  make  you  forget  any 
letters  you  were  looking  for.  The  opening  of  the 
mid-day  mail  is  that  which  most  throngs  with  sum 
mer  folks  the  little  post-office  under  the  elms,  oppo 
site  the  weather-beaten  mansion  of  Sir  William  Pep- 
perrell ;  but  the  evening  mail  attracts  a  large  and  main 
ly  disinterested  circle  of  natives.  The  day's  work  on 
land  and  sea  is  then  over,  and  the  village  leisure, 
perched  upon  fences  and  stayed  against  house  walls, 
is  of  a  picturesqueness  which  we  should  prize  if  we  saw 
it  abroad,  and  which  I  am  not  willing  to  slight  on  our 
own  ground. 

II 

The  type  is  mostly  of  a  seafaring  brown,  a  com 
plexion  which  seems  to  be  inherited  rather  than  per 
sonally  acquired;  for  the  commerce  of  Kittery  Point 
perished  long  ago,  and  the  fishing  fleets  that  used  to 
fit  out  from  her  wharves  have  almost  as  long  ago  passed 
to  Gloucester.  All  that  is  left  of  the  fishing  interest 
is  the  weir  outside  which  supplies,  fitfully  and  uncer 
tainly,  the  fish  shipped  fresh  to  the  nearest  markets. 
But  in  spite  of  this  the  tint  taken  from  the  suns  and 

255 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

winds  of  the  sea  lingers  on  the  local  complexion;  and 
the  local  manner  is  that  freer  and  easier  manner  of 
people  who  have  known  other  coasts,  and  are  in  some 
sort  citizens  of  the  world.  It  is  very  different  from  the 
inland  New  England  manner;  as  different  as  the  gen 
tle,  slow  speech  of  the  shore  from  the  clipped  nasals 
of  the  hill-country.  The  lounging  native  walk  is  not 
the  heavy  plod  taught  by  the  furrow,  but  has  the  lurch 
and  the  sway  of  the  deck  in  it. 

Nothing  could  be  better  suited  to  progress  through 
the  long  village,  which  rises  and  sinks  beside  the  shore 
like  a  landscape  with  its  sea-legs  on ;  and  nothing  could 
be  more  charming  and  friendly  than  this  village.  It 
is  quite  untainted  as  yet  by  the  summer  cottages  which 
have  covered  so  much  of  the  coast,  and  made  it  look  as 
if  the  aesthetic  suburbs  of  New  York  and  Boston  had 
gone  ashore  upon  it.  There  are  two  or  three  old-fash 
ioned  summer  hotels ;  but  the  summer  life  distinctly 
fails  to  characterize  the  place.  The  people  live  where 
their  forefathers  have  lived  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years;  and  for  the  century  since  the  baronial  domain 
of  Sir  William  was  broken  up  and  his  possessions  con 
fiscated  by  the  young  Republic,  they  have  dwelt  in 
small  red  or  white  houses  on  their  small  holdings  along 
the  slopes  and  levels  of  the  low  hills  beside  the  water, 
where  a  man  may  pass  with  the  least  inconvenience 
and  delay  from  his  threshold  to  his  gunwale.  Not  all 
the  houses  are  small;  some  are  spacious  and  ambi 
tious  to  be  of  ugly  modern  patterns;  but  most  are 
simple  and  homelike.  Their  gardens,  following  the 
example  of  Sir  William's  vanished  pleasaunce,  drop 
southward  to  the  shore,  where  the  lobster-traps  and 
the  hen-coops  meet  in  unembarrassed  promiscuity. 
But  the  fish-flakes  which  once  gave  these  inclines  the 
effect  of  terraced  vineyards  have  passed  as  utterly  as 
the  proud  parterres  of  the  old  baronet ;  and  Kittery  Point 

256 


STACCATO  NOTES   OF  A  VANISHED  SUMMER 

no  longer  "  makes "  a  cod  or  a  haddock  for  the  mar 
ket. 

Three  groceries,  a  butcher  shop,  and  a  small  variety 
store  study  the  few  native  wants;  and  with  a  little 
money  one  may  live  in  as  great  real  comfort  here  as 
for  much  in  a  larger  place.  The  street  takes  care  of 
itself;  the  seafaring  housekeeping  of  New  England  is 
not  of  the  insatiable  Dutch  type  which  will  not  spare 
the  stones  of  the  highway ;  but  within  the  houses  are 
of  almost  terrifying  cleanliness.  The  other  day  I 
found  myself  in  a  kitchen  where  the  stove  shone  like 
oxidized  silver;  the  pump  and  sink  were  clad  in  oil 
cloth  as  with  blue  tiles;  the  walls  were  papered;  the 
stainless  floor  was  strewn  with  home-made  hooked  and 
braided  rugs ;  and  I  felt  the  place  so  altogether  too  good 
for  me  that  I  pleaded  to  stay  there  for  the  transaction 
of  my  business,  lest  a  sharper  sense  of  my  unfitness 
should  await  me  in  the  parlor. 

The  village,  with  scarcely  an  interval  of  farm-lands, 
stretches  four  miles  along  the  water-side  to  Portsmouth  ; 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  just  at  the  point  where  our  lines 
have  fallen  there  is  the  greatest  concentration  of  its 
character.  This  has  apparently  not  been  weakened, 
it  has  been  accented,  by  the  trolley-line  which  passes 
through  its  whole  length,  with  gayly  freighted  cars 
coming  and  going  every  half-hour.  I  suppose  they  are 
not  longer  than  other  trolley-cars,  but  they  each  affect 
me  like  a  procession.  They  are  cheerful  presences 
by  day,  and  by  night  they  light  up  the  dim,  winding 
street  with  the  flare  of  their  electric  bulbs,  and  bring  to 
the  country  a  vision  of  city  splendor  upon  terms  that 
do  not  humiliate  or  disquiet.  During  July  and  Au 
gust  they  are  mostly  filled  with  summer  folks  from  a 
great  summer  resort  beyond  us,  and  their  lights  reveal 
the  pretty  fashions  of  hats  and  gowns  in  all  the  charm 
of  the  latest  lines  and  tints.  But  there  is  an  increasing 
17  257 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

democracy  in  these  splendors,  and  one  might  easily 
mistake  a  passing  excursionist  from  some  neighbor 
ing  inland  town,  or  even  a  local  native  with  the  instinct 
of  clothes,  for  a  social  leader  from  York  Harbor. 

With  the  falling  leaf,  the  bargelike  open  cars  close 
up  into  well-warmed  saloons,  and  falter  to  hourly  in 
tervals  in  their  course.  But  we  are  still  far  from  the 
falling  leaf;  we  are  hardly  come  to  the  blushing  or 
fading  leaf.  Here  and  there  an  impassioned  maple 
confesses  the  autumn ;  the  ancient  Pepperrell  elms 
fling  down  showers  of  the  baronet's  fairy  gold  in  the 
September  gusts ;  the  sumacs  and  the  blackberry  vines 
are  ablaze  along  the  tumbling  black  stone  walls;  but 
it  is  still  summer,  it  is  still  summer:  I  cannot  allow 
otherwise ! 


Ill 

The  other  day  I  visited  for  the  first  time  (in  the  opu 
lent  indifference  of  one  who  could  see  it  any  time)  the 
stately  tomb  of  the  first  Pepperrell,  who  came  from 
Cornwall  to  these  coasts,  and  settled  finally  at  Kittery 
Point.  He  laid  there  the  foundations  of  the  greatest 
fortune  in  colonial  New  England,  which  revolutionary 
New  England  seized  and  dispersed,  as  I  cannot  but 
feel,  a  little  ruthlessly.  In  my  personal  quality  I  am  , 
of  course  averse  to  all  great  fortunes ;  and  in  my  civic 
capacity  I  am  a  patriot.  But  still  I  feel  a  sort  of  grace 
in  wealth  a  century  old,  and  if  I  could  now  have  my 
way,  I  would  not  have  had  their  possessions  reft  from 
those  kindly  Pepperrells,  who  could  hardly  help  being 
loyal  to  the  fountain  of  their  baronial  honors.  Sir  Will 
iam,  indeed,  had  helped,  more  than  any  other  man,  to 
bring  the  people  who  despoiled  him  to  a  national  con 
sciousness.  If  he  did  not  imagine,  he  mainly  managed 
the  plucky  New  England  expedition  against  Louis- 

258 


STACCATO  NOTES   OF  A  VANISHED   SUMMER 

bourg  at  Cape  Breton  a  half  century  before  the  War 
of  Independence;  and  his  splendid  success  in  rending 
that  stronghold  from  the  French  taught  the  colonists 
that  they  were  Americans,  and  need  be  Englishmen 
no  longer  than  they  liked.  His  soldiers  were  of  the 
stamp  of  all  succeeding  American  armies,  and  his 
leadership  wras  of  the  neighborly  and  fatherly  sort 
natural  to  an  amiable  man  who  knew  most  of  them 
personally.  He  was  already  the  richest  man  in  Amer 
ica,  and  his  grateful  king  made  him  a  baronet;  but 
he  came  contentedly  back  to  Kittery,  and  took  up  his 
old  life  in  a  region  where  he  had  the  comfortable  con 
sideration  of  an  unrivalled  magnate.  He  built  him 
self  the  dignified  mansion  which  still  stands  across 
the  way  from  the  post-office  on  Kittery  Point,  within 
an  easy  stone's  cast  of  the  far  older  house,  where  his 
father  wedded  Margery  Bray,  when  he  came,  a  thrifty 
young  Welsh  fisherman,  from  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  and 
established  his  family  on  Kittery.  The  Bray  house 
had  been  the  finest  in  the  region  a  hundred  years  be 
fore  the  Pepperrell  mansion  was  built;  it  still  remem 
bers  its  consequence  in  the  panelling  and  wainscoting 
of  the  large,  square  parlor  where  the  young  people 
were  married  and  in  the  elaborate  staircase  cramped 
into  the  little,  square  hall ;  and  the  Bray  fortune  helped 
materially  to  swell  the  wealth  of  the  Pepperrells. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  should  care  now  to  have  a  man 
able  to  ride  thirty  miles  on  his  own  land ;  but  I  do  not 
mind  Sir  William's  having  done  it  here  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  ago;  and  I  wish  the  confiscations  had 
left  his  family,  say,  about  a  mile  of  it.  They  could 
now,  indeed,  enjoy  it  only  in  the  collateral  branches, 
for  all  Sir  William's  line  is  extinct.  The  splendid 
mansion  which  he  built  his  daughter  is  in  alien  hands, 
and  the  fine  old  house  which  Lady  Pepperrell  built 
herself  after  his  death  belongs  to  the  remotest  of  kins- 

259 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

men.  A  group  of  these,  the  descendants  of  a  prolific 
sister  of  the  baronet,  meets  every  year  at  Kittery  Point 
as  the  Pepperrell  Association,  and,  in  a  tent  hard 
by  the  little  grove  of  drooping  spruces  which  shade 
the  admirable  renaissance  cenotaph  of  Sir  William's 
father,  cherishes  the  family  memories  with  due  Amer 
ican  "  proceedings/' 

IV 

The  meeting  of  the  Pepperrell  Association  was  by 
no  means  the  chief  excitement  of  our  summer.  In 
fact,  I  do  not  know  that  it  was  an  excitement  at  all; 
and  I  am  sure  it  was  not  comparable  to  the  presence 
of  our  naval  squadron,  when  for  four  days  the  mighty 
,  dragon  and  kraken  shapes  of  steel,  which  had  crum 
bled  the  decrepit  pride  of  Spain  in  the  fight  at  Santi 
ago,  weltered  in  our  peaceful  waters,  almost  under  my 
window. 

I  try  now  to  dignify  them  with  handsome  epithets; 
but  while  they  were  here  I  had  moments  of  thinking 
they  looked  like  a  lot  of  whited  locomotives,  which  had 
broken  through  from  some  trestle,  in  a  recent  acci 
dent,  and  were  waiting  the  offices  of  a  wrecking-train. 
The  poetry  of  the  man-of-war  still  clings  to  the  "three- 
decker  out  of  the  foam  "  of  the  past ;  it  is  too  soon  yet 
for  it  to  have  cast  a  mischievous  halo  about  the  modern 
battle-ship;  and  I  looked  at  the  New  York  and  the 
Texas  and  the  Brooklyn  and  the  rest,  and  thought, 
"Ah,  but  for  you,  and  our  need  of  proving  your  dire 
efficiency,  perhaps  we  could  have  got  on  with  the  wick 
edness  of  Spanish  rule  in  Cuba,  and  there  had  been 
no  war!"  Under  my  reluctant  eyes  the  great,  dreadful 
spectacle  of  the  Santiago  fight  displayed  itself  in  peace 
ful  Kittery  Harbor.  I  saw  the  Spanish  ships  drive 
upon  the  reef  where  a  man  from  Dover,  New  Hamp- 

260 


SIR    WILLIAM    PEl'PERRELL 


STACCATO  NOTES  OF  A  VANISHED   SUMMER 

shire,  was  camping  in  a  little  wooden  shanty  uncon 
scious;  and  I  heard  the  dying  screams  of  the  Spanish 
sailors,  seethed  and  scalded  within  the  steel  walls  of 
their  own  wicked  war-kettles. 

As  for  the  guns,  battle  or  no  battle,  our  ships,  like 
"  kind  Lieutenant  Belay  of  the  Hot  Cross-Bun,"  seemed 
to  be  "banging  away  the  whole  day  long.0  They  set 
a  bad  example  to  the  dreamy  old  fort  on  the  Newcas 
tle  shore,  which,  till  they  came,  only  recollected  itself 
to  salute  the  sunrise  and  sunset  with  a  single  gun; 
but  which,  under  provocation  of  the  squadron,  formed 
a  habit  of  firing  twenty  or  thirty  times  at  noon. 

Other  martial  shows  and  noises  were  not  so  bad.  I 
rather  liked^  seeing  the  morning  drill  of  the  marines 
and  the  blue-jackets  on  the  iron  decks,  with  the  lively 
music  that  went  with  it.  The  bugle  calls  and  the  bells 
were  charming ;  the  week's  wash  hung  out  to  dry  had 
its  picturesqueness  by  day,  and  by  night  the  spectral 
play  of  the  search-lights  along  the  waves  and  shores, 
and  against  the  startled  skies,  was  even  more  impres 
sive.  There  was  a  band  which  gave  us  every  evening 
the  airs  of  the  latest  coon-songs,  and  the  national  an 
thems  which  we  have  borrowred  from  various  nations; 
and  yes,  I  remember  the  white  squadron  kindly,  though 
I  was  so  glad  to  have  it  go,  and  let  us  lapse  back  into 
our  summer  silence  and  calm.  It  was  (I  do  not  mind 
saying  now)  a  majestic  sight  to  see  those  grotesque 
monsters  gather  themselves  together,  and  go  wallow 
ing,  one  after  another,  out  of  the  harbor,  and  drop  be 
hind  the  ledge  of  Whaleback  Light,  as  if  they  had  sunk 
into  the  sea. 


A  deep  peace  fell  upon  us  when  they  went,  and  it 
must  have  been  at  this  most  receptive  moment,  when  all 

261 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

our  sympathies  were  adjusted  in  a  mood  of  hospitable 
expectation,  that  Jim  appeared. 

Jim  was,  and  still  is,  and  I  hope  will  long  be,  a  cat ; 
but  unless  one  has  lived  at  Kittery  Point,  and  realized, 
from  observation  and  experience,  what  a  leading  part 
cats  may  play  in  society,  one  cannot  feel  the  full  im 
port  of  this  fact.  Not  only  has  every  house  in  Kittery 
its  cat,  but  every  house  seems  to  have  its  half-dozen 
cats,  large,  little,  old,  and  young;  of  divers  colors, 
tending  mostly  to  a  dark  tortoise-shell.  With  a  whole 
ocean  inviting  to  the  tragic  rite,  I  do  not  believe  there 
is  ever  a  kitten  drowned  in  Kittery;  the  illimitable  sea 
rather  employs  itself  in  supplying  the  fish  to  which 
"no  cat's  averse/'  but  which  the  cats  of  Kittery  de 
mand  to  have  cooked.  They  do  not  like  raw  fish; 
they  say  it  plainly,  and  they  prefer  to  have  the  bones 
taken  out  for  them,  though  they  do  not  insist  upon  that 
point. 

At  least,  Jim  never  did  so  from  the  time  when  he  first 
scented  the  odor  of  delicate  young  mackerel  in  the  even 
ing  air  about  our  kitchen,  and  dropped  in  upon  the 
maids  there  with  a  fine  casual  effect  of  being  merely 
out  for  a  walk,  and  feeling  it  a  neighborly  thing  to  call. 
He  had  on  a  silver  collar,  engraved  with  his  name  and 
surname,  which  offered  itself  for  introduction  like  a 
visiting-card.  He  was  too  polite  to  ask  himself  to  the 
table  at  once,  but  after  he  had  been  welcomed  to  the 
family  circle,  he  formed  the  habit  of  finding  himself 
with  us  at  breakfast  and  supper,  when  he  sauntered 
in  like  one  who  should  say,  "Did  I  smell  fish?"  but 
would  not  go  further  in  the  way  of  hinting. 

He  had  no  need  to  do  so.  He  was  made  at  home, 
and  freely  invited  to  our  best  not  only  in  fish,  but  in 
chicken,  for  which  he  showed  a  nice  taste,  and  in  sweet- 
corn,  for  which  he  revealed  a  most  surprising  fondness 
when  it  was  cut  from  the  cob  for  him.  After  he  had 

262 


STACCATO  NOTES   OF  A  VANISHED   SUMMER 

breakfasted  or  supped  he  gracefully  suggested  that  he 
was  thirsty  by  climbing  to  the  table  where  the  water- 
pitcher  stood  and  stretching  his  fine  feline  head  tow 
ards  it.  When  he  had  lapped  up  his  saucer  of  water, 
he  inarched  into  the  parlor,  and  riveted  the  chains  upon 
our  fondness  by  taking  the  best  chair  and  going  to 
sleep  in  it  in  attitudes  of  Egyptian,  of  Assyrian  maj 
esty. 

His  arts  were  few  or  none;  he  rather  disdained  to 
practise  any ;  he  completed  our  conquest  by  maintain 
ing  himself  simply  a  fascinating  presence;  and  per 
haps  we  spoiled  Jim.  It  is  certain  that  he  came  under 
my  window  at  two  o'clock  one  night,  and  tried  the 
kitchen  door.  It  resisted  his  efforts  to  get  in,  and  then 
Jim  began  to  use  language  which  I  had  never  heard 
from  the  lips  of  a  cat  before,  and  seldom  from  the  lips 
of  a  man.  I  will  not  repeat  it;  enough  that  it  carried 
to  the  listener  the  conviction  that  Jim  was  not  sober. 
Where  he  could  have  got  his  liquor  in  the  totally  ab 
stinent  State  of  Maine  I  could  not  positively  say,  but 
probably  of  some  sailor  who  had  brought  it  from  the 
neighboring  New  Hampshire  coast.  There  could  be 
no  doubt,  however,  that  Jim  was  drunk;  and  a  dash 
from  the  water-pitcher  seemed  the  only  thing  for  him. 
The  water  did  not  touch  him,  but  he  started  back  in 
surprise  and  grief,  and  vanished  into  the  night  without 
a  word. 

His  feelings  must  have  been  deeply  wounded,  for  it 
was  almost  a  week  before  he  came  near  us  again ;  and 
then  I  think  that  nothing  but  young  lobster  would  have 
brought  him.  He  forgave  us  finally,  and  made  us  of 
his  party  in  the  quarrel  he  began  gradually  to  have 
with  the  large  yellow  cat  of  a  next-door  neighbor.  This 
culminated  one  afternoon,  after  a  long  exchange  of 
mediaeval  defiance  and  insult,  in  a  battle  upon  a  bed 
of  rag-weed,  with  wild  shrieks  of  rage,  and  prodigious 

263 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

feats  of  ground  and  lofty  tumbling.  It  seemed  to  our 
anxious  eyes  that  Jim  was  getting  the  worst  of  it;  but 
when  we  afterwards  visited  the  battle-field  and  picked 
up  several  tufts  of  blond  fur,  we  were  in  a  doubt  which 
was  afterwards  heightened  by  Jim's  invasion  of  the 
yellow  cat's  territory,  where  he  stretched  himself  de 
fiantly  upon  the  grass  and  seemed  to  be  challenging 
the  yellow  cat  to  come  out  and  try  to  put  him  off  the 
premises. 


THE  ART  OF  THE  ADSMITH 

THE  other  day,  a  friend  of  mine,  who  professes  all 
the  intimacy  of  a  bad  conscience  with  many  of 
my  thoughts  and  convictions,  came  in  with  a  bulky 
book  under  his  arm,  and  said,  "I  see  by  a  guilty 
look  in  your  eye  that  you  are  meaning  to  write  about 
spring/' 

"I  am  not/'  I  retorted,  "and  if  I  were,  it  would  be 
because  none  of  the  new  things  have  been  said  yet 
about  spring,  and  because  spring  is  never  an  old  story, 
any  more  than  youth  or  love/' 

"I  have  heard  something  like  that  before/'  said  my 
friend,  "and  I  understand.  The  simple  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  this  is  the  fag-end  of  the  season,  and  you 
have  run  low  in  your  subjects.  Now  take  my  advice 
and  don't  write  about  spring;  it  will  make  everybody 
hate  you,  and  will  do  no  good.  Write  about  adver 
tising/'  He  tapped  the  book  under  his  arm  signifi 
cantly.  "Here  is  a  theme  for  you." 


He  had  no  sooner  pronounced  these  words  than  I 
began  to  feel  a  weird  and  potent  fascination  in  his  sug 
gestion.  I  took  the  book  from  him  and  looked  it  eager 
ly  through.  It  was  called  Good  Advertising,  and  it 
was  written  by  one  of  the  experts  in  the  business  who 
have  advanced  it  almost  to  the  grade  of  an  art,  or  a 
humanity. 

265 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

"But  I  see  nothing  here/'  I  said,  musingly,  "which 
would  enable  a  self-respecting  author  to  come  to  the 
help  of  his  publisher  in  giving  due  hold  upon  the  pub 
lic  interest  those  charming  characteristics  of  his  book 
which  no  one  else  can  feel  so  penetratingly  or  celebrate 
so  persuasively/' 

"I  expected  some  such  objection  from  you/'  said  my 
friend.  "  You  will  admit  that  there  is  everything  else 
here?" 

"Everything  but  that  most  essential  thing.  You 
know  how  we  all  feel  about  it:  the  bitter  disappoint 
ment,  the  heart  -  sickening  sense  of  insufficiency  that 
the  advertised  praises  of  our  books  give  us  poor  au 
thors.  The  effect  is  far  worse  than  that  of  the  reviews, 
for  the  reviewer  is  not  your  ally  and  copartner,  while 
your  publisher — " 

"I  see  what  you  mean/'  said  my  friend.  "But  you 
must  have  patience.  If  the  author  of  this  book  can 
write  so  luminously  of  advertising  in  other  respects,  I 
am  sure  he  will  yet  be  able  to  cast  a  satisfactory  light 
upon  your  problem.  The  question  is,  I  believe,  how 
to  translate  into  irresistible  terms  all  that  fond  and 
exultant  regard  which  a  writer  feels  for  his  book, 
all  his  pervasive  appreciation  of  its  singular  beauty, 
unique  value,  and  utter  charm,  and  transfer  it  to  print, 
without  infringing  upon  the  delicate  and  shrinking 
modesty  which  is  the  distinguishing  ornament  of  the 
literary  spirit?" 

"Something  like  that.     But  you  understand." 

"Perhaps  a  Rontgen  ray  might  be  got  to  do  it/' 
said  my  friend,  thoughtfully,  "or  perhaps  this  author 
may  bring  his  mind  to  bear  upon  it  yet.  He  seems 
to  have  considered  every  kind  of  advertising  except 
book-advertising. " 

"The  most  important  of  all!"  I  cried,  impatiently. 

"You  think  so  because  you  are  in  that  line.  If 

266 


THE   ART   OF   THE   ADSMITH 

you  were  in  the  line  of  varnish,  or  bicycles,  or  soap, 
or  typewriters,  or  extract  of  beef,  or  of  malt — " 

"Still  I  should  be  interested  in  book  -  advertising, 
because  it  is  the  most  vital  of  human  interests/' 

"Tell  me/'  said  my  friend,  "do  you  read  the  adver 
tisements  of  the  books  of  rival  authors?" 

"Brother  authors/'  I  corrected  him. 

"Well,  brother  authors/' 

I  said,  No,  candidly,  I  did  not;  and  I  forbore  to 
add  that  I  thought  them  little  better  than  a  waste 
of  the  publishers'  money. 


II 

My  friend  did  not  pursue  his  inquiry  to  my  personal 
disadvantage,  but  seemed  to  prefer  a  more  general 
philosophy  of  the  matter. 

"I  have  often  wondered,"  he  said,  "at  the  enormous 
expansion  of  advertising,  and  doubted  whether  it  was 
not  mostly  wasted.  But  my  author,  here,  has  sug 
gested  a  brilliant  fact  which  I  was  unwittingly  grop 
ing  for.  When  you  take  up  a  Sunday  paper "  —  I  . 
shuddered,  and  my  friend  smiled  intelligence—"  you  1 
are  simply  appalled  at  the  miles  of  announcements  of 
all  sorts.  Who  can  possibly  read  them?  Who  cares 
even  to  look  at  them?  But  if  you  want  something  in 
particular — to  furnish  a  house,  or  buy  a  suburban 
place,  or  take  a  steamer  for  Europe,  or  go  to  the  the 
atre — then  you  find  out  at  once  who  reads  the  adver 
tisements,  and  cares  to  look  at  them.  They  respond  to 
the  multifarious  wants  of  the  whole  community.  You 
have  before  you  the  living  operation  of  that  law  of 
demand  and  supply  which  it  has  always  been  such  a 
bore  to  hear  about.  As  often  happens,  the  supply  seems 
to  come  before  the  demand ;  but  that's  only  an  appear-  , 

267 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

ance.  You  wanted  something,  and  you  found  an  offer 
to  meet  your  want." 

"  Then  you  don't  believe  that  the  offer  to  meet  your 
want  suggested  it?" 

"I  see  that  my  author  believes  something  of  the 
kind.  We  may  be  full  of  all  sorts  of  unconscious 
wants  which  merely  need  the  vivifying  influence  of 
an  advertisement  to  make  them  spring  into  active 
being;  but  I  have  a  feeling  that  the  money  paid  for 
advertising  which  appeals  to  potential  wants  is  largely 
thrown  away.  You  must  want  a  thing,  or  think  you 
want  it;  otherwise  you  resent  the  proffer  of  it  as  a 
kind  of  impertinence." 

"  There  are  some  kinds  of  advertisements,  all  the 
same,  that  I  read  without  the  slightest  interest  in  the 
subject  matter.  Simply  the  beauty  of  the  style  at 
tracts  me." 

"I  know.  But  does  it  ever  move  you  to  get  what 
you  don't  want?" 

"Never;  and  I  should  be  glad  to  know  what  your 
author  thinks  of  that  sort  of  advertising :  the  literary, 
or  dramatic,  or  humorous,  or  quaint." 

"He  doesn't  contemn  it,  quite.  But  I  think  he 
feels  that  it  may  have  had  its  day.  Do  you  still  read 
such  advertisements  with  your  early  zest?" 

"No;  the  zest  for  nearly  everything  goes.  I  don't 
care  so  much  for  Tourguenief  as  I  used.  Still,  if  I 
come  upon  the  jaunty  and  laconic  suggestions  of  a 
certain  well-known  clothing  -  house,  concerning  the 
season's  wear,  I  read  them  with  a  measure  of  satis 
faction.  The  advertising  expert — " 

"This  author  calls  him  the  adsmith." 

"Delightful!  Ad  is  a  loathly  little  word,  but  we 
must  come  to  it.  It's  as  legitimate  as  lunch.  But 
as  I  was  saying,  the  adsmith  seems  to  have  caught 
the  American  business  tone,  as  perfectly  as  any 

268 


THE   ART  OF  THE  ADSMITH 

of  our  novelists  have  caught  the  American  social 
tone." 

"Yes/'  said  my  friend,  "and  he  seems  to  have  pros 
pered  as  richly  by  it.  You  know  some  of  those  chaps 
make  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  dollars  by  adsmith- 
ing.  They  have  put  their  art  quite  on  a  level  with 
fiction  pecuniarily/' 

"Perhaps  it  is  a  branch  of  fiction/'  **~ 

"No;  they  claim  that  it  is  pure  fact.  My  author 
discourages  the  slightest  admixture  of  fable.  The 
truth,  clearly  and  simply  expressed,  is  the  best  in  an 
ad." 

" It  is  best  in  a  wof,  too.  I  am  always  saying  that." 
/"Wof?" 

"  Well,  work  of  fiction.  It's  another  new  word,  like 
lunch  or  ad." 

"But  in  a  wof,"  said  my  friend,  instantly  adopting 
it,  "  my  author  insinuates  that  the  fashion  of  payment 
tempts  you  to  verbosity,  while  in  an  ad  the  conditions 
oblige  you  to  the  greatest  possible  succinctness.  In 
one  case  you  are  paid  by  the  word;  in  the  other  you 
pay  by  the  word.  That  is  where  the  adsmith  stands 
upon  higher  moral  ground  than  the  wof  smith." 

"I  should  think  your  author  might  have  written  a 

recent  article  in  The  ,  reproaching  fiction  with 

its  unhallowed  gains." 

"If  you  mean  that  for  a  sneer,  it  is  misplaced.  He 
would  have  been  incapable  of  it.  My  author  is  no 
more  the  friend  of  honesty  in  adsmithing  than  he  is 
of  propriety.  He  deprecates  jocosity  in  apothecaries 
and  undertakers,  not  only  as  bad  taste,  but  as  bad 
business ;  and  he  is  as  severe  as  any  one  could  be  upon 
ads  that  seize  the  attention  by  disgusting  or  shocking 
the  reader. 

"  He  is  to  be  praised  for  that,  and  for  the  other  thing ; 
and  I  shouldn't  have  minded  his  criticising  the  ready 

269 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

wofsmith.  I  hope  he  attacks  the  use  of  display  type, 
which  makes  our  newspapers  look  like  the  poster- 
plastered  fences  around  vacant  lots.  In  New  York 
there  is  only  one  paper  whose  advertisements  are  not 
typographically  a  shock  to  the  nerves/' 

"Well,"  said  my  friend,  "he  attacks  foolish  and 
ineffective  display/' 

"It  is  all  foolish  and  ineffective.  It  is  like  a  crowd 
of  people  trying  to  make  themselves  heard  by  shouting 
each  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  A  paper  full  of  display 
advertisements  is  an  image  of  our  whole  congested 
L.  and  delirious  state  of  competition ;  but  even  in  com 
petitive  conditions  it  is  unnecessary,  and  it  is  futile. 
Compare  any  New  York  paper  but  one  with  the  Lon 
don  papers,  and  you  will  see  what  I  mean.  Of  course 
I  refer  to  the  ad  pages ;  the  rest  of  our  exception  is  as 
offensive  with  pictures  and  scare  -  heads  as  all  the 
rest.  I  wish  your  author  could  revise  his  opinions 
and  condemn  all  display  in  ads/' 

"I  dare  say  he  will  when  he  knows  what  you  think/' 
said  my  friend,  with  imaginable  sarcasm. 


Ill 

"I  wish,"  I  went  on,  "that  he  would  give  us  some 
philosophy  of  the  prodigious  increase  of  advertising 
within  the  last  twenty-five  years,  and  some  conjecture 
as  to  the  end  of  it  all.  Evidently,  it  can't  keep  on 
increasing  at  the  present  rate.  If  it  does,  there  will 
?  presently  be  no  room  in  the  world  for  things;  it  will 
be  filled  up  with  the  advertisements  of  things." 

"Before  that  time,  perhaps,"  my  friend  suggested, 
"adsmithing  will  have  become  so  fine  and  potent  an 
art  that  advertising  will  be  reduced  in  bulk,  while  keep 
ing  all  its  energy  and  even  increasing  its  effectiveness." 

270 


THE  ART  OF  THE  ADSMITH 

"Perhaps/'  I  said,  "some  silent  electrical  process 
will  be  contrived,  so  that  the  attractions  of  a  new  line 
of  dress -goods  or  the  fascination  of  a  spring  or  fall 
opening  may  be  imparted  to  a  lady's  consciousness 
without  even  the  agency  of  words.  All  other  facts 
of  commercial  and  industrial  interest  could  be  dealt 
with  in  the  same  way.  A  fine  thrill  could  be  made 
to  go  from  the  last  new  book  through  the  whole  com 
munity,  so  that  people  would  not  willingly  rest  till 
they  had  it.  Yes,  one  can  see  an  indefinite  future 
for  advertising  in  that  way.  The  adsmith  may  be  ^ 
the  supreme  artist  of  the  twentieth  century.  He  may 
assemble  in  his  grasp,  and  employ  at  will,  all  the  arts 
and  sciences/' 

"Yes/'  said  my  friend,  with  a  sort  of  fall  in  his 
voice,  "that  is  very  well.  But  what  is  to  become  of 
the  race  when  it  is  penetrated  at  every  pore  with 
sense  of  the  world's  demand  and  supply?" 

"  Oh,  that  is  another  affair.     I  was  merely  imagining 
the  possible  resources  of  invention  in  providing  for  the 
increase  of  advertising  while  guarding  the  integrity  of 
the  planet.     I  think,  very  likely,  if  the  thing  keeps 
on,  we  shall  all  go  mad ;  but  then  we  shall  none  of  us  I  ^ 
be  able  to  criticise  the  others.     Or  possibly  the  thing  ' 
may  work  its   own  cure.     You  know  the  ingenuity 
of  the  political  economists  in  justifying  the  egotism 
to  which  conditions  appeal.     They  do  not  deny  that 
these  foster  greed  and  rapacity  in  merciless  degree, 
but  they  contend  that  when  the  wealth-winner  drops 
off  gorged  there  is  a  kind  of  miracle  wrought,  and 
good  comes  of  it  all.     I  never  could  see  how;  but  if  it 
is  true,  why  shouldn't  a  sort  of  ultimate  immunity  \ 
come  back  to  us  from  the  very  excess  and  invasion  of    ' 
the  appeals  now  made  to  us,  and  destined  to  be  made 
to  us  still  more  by  the  adsmith?    Come,  isn't  there 
hope  in  that?" 

271 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

"I  see  a  great  opportunity  for  the  wof smith  in  some 
such  dream/'  said  my  friend.  "Why  don't  you  turn 
\/  /  it  to  account?" 

"You  know  that  isn't  my  line;  I  must  leave  that 
sort  of  wofsmithing  to  the  romantic  novelist.  Be 
sides,  I  have  my  well-known  panacea  for  all  the  ills 
our  state  is  heir  to,  in  a  civilization  which  shall  leg 
islate  foolish  and  vicious  and  ugly  and  adulterate 
things  out  of  the  possibility  of  existence.  Most  of 
the  adsmithing  is  now  employed  in  persuading  people 
that  such  things  are  useful,  beautiful,  and  pure.  But 
in  my  civilization  they  shall  not  even  be  suffered  to 
be  made,  much  less  foisted  upon  the  community  by 
adsmiths/' 

"I  see  what  you  mean/'  said  my  friend;  and  he 
sighed  gently.  "I  had  much  better  let  you  write 
about  spring," 


THE   PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PLAGIARISM 

A  LATE  incident  in  the  history  of  a  very  wide 
spread  English  novelist,  triumphantly  closed  by 
the  statement  of  his  friend  that  the  novelist  had  casual 
ly  failed  to  accredit  a  given  passage  in  his  novel  to  the 
real  author,  has  brought  freshly  to  my  mind  a  curious 
question  in  ethics.  The  friend  who  vindicated  the  nov 
elist,  or,  rather,  who  contemptuously  dismissed  the 
matter,  not  only  confessed  the  fact  of  adoption,  but  de 
clared  that  it  was  one  of  many  which  could  be  found  in 
the  novelist's  works.  The  novelist,  he  said,  was  quite 
in  the  habit  of  so  using  material  in  the  rough,  which 
he  implied  was  like  using  any  fact  or  idea  from  life, 
and  he  declared  that  the  novelist  could  not  bother 
to  answer  critics  who  regarded  these  exploitations 
as  a  sort  of  depredation.  In  a  manner  he  brushed 
the  impertinent  accusers  aside,  assuring  the  general 
public  that  the  novelist  always  meant,  at  his  leisure, 
and  in  his  own  way,  duly  to  ticket  the  flies  preserved 
in  his  amber. 


When  I  read  this  haughty  vindication,  I  thought 
at  first  that  if  the  case  were  mine  I  would  rather  have 
several  deadly  enemies  than  such  a  friend  as  that; 
but  since,  I  have  not  been  so  sure.  I  have  asked  my 
self  upon  a  careful  review  of  the  matter  \vhether  pla 
giarism  may  not  be  frankly  avowed,  as  in  nowise 
18  273 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

dishonest,  and  I  wish  some  abler  casuist  would  take 
the  affair  into  consideration  and  make  it  clear  for 
me.  If  we  are  to  suppose  that  offences  against  society 
disgrace  the  offender,  and  that  public  dishonor  argues 
the  fact  of  some  such  offence,  then  apparently  pla 
giarism  is  not  such  an  offence ;  for  in  even  very  flagrant 
cases  it  does  not  disgrace.  The  dictionary,  indeed, 
defines  it  as  "the  crime  of  literary  theft";  but  as  no 
penalty  attaches  to  it,  and  no  lasting  shame,  it  is  hard 
to  believe  it  either  a  crime  or  a  theft ;  and  the  offence, 
if  it  is  an  offence  (one  has  to  call  it  something,  and  I 
hope  the  word  is  not  harsh),  is  some  such  harmless 
infraction  of  the  moral  law  as  white-lying. 

The  much-perverted  saying  of  Moliere,  that  he  took 
his  own  where  he  found  it,  is  perhaps  in  the  conscious 
ness  of  those  who  appropriate  the  things  other  people 
have  rushed  in  with  before  them.  But  really  they  seem 
to  need  neither  excuse  nor  defence  with  the  impartial 
public  if  they  are  caught  in  the  act  of  reclaiming  their 
property  or  despoiling  the  rash  intruder  upon  their 
premises.  The  novelist  in  question  is  by  no  means 
the  only  recent  example,  and  is  by  no  means  a  flagrant 
example.  While  the  ratification  of  the  treaty  with 
Spain  was  pending  before  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States,  a  member  of  that  body  opposed  it  in  a  speech 
almost  word  for  word  the  same  as  a  sermon  delivered 
in  New  York  City  only  a  few  days  earlier  and  published 
broadcast.  He  was  promptly  exposed  by  the  parallel- 
column  system ;  but  I  have  never  heard  that  his  stand 
ing  was  affected  or  his  usefulness  impaired  by  the 
offence  proven  against  him.  A  few  years  ago  an 
eminent  divine  in  one  of  our  cities  preached  as  his  own 
the  sermon  of  a  brother  divine,  no  longer  living ;  he,  too, 
was  detected  and  promptly  exposed  by  the  parallel- 
column  system,  but  nothing  whatever  happened  from 
the  exposure.  Every  one  must  recall  like  instances, 

274 


THE    PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PLAGIARISM 

more  or  less  remote.  I  remember  one  within  my  youth- 
fuller  knowledge  of  a  journalist  who  used  as  his  own 
all  the  denunciatory  passages  of  Macaulay's  article 
on  Barrere,  and  applied  them  with  changes  of  name 
to  the  character  and  conduct  of  a  local  politician  whom 
he  felt  it  his  duty  to  devote  to  infamy.  He  was  caught 
in  the  fact,  and  by  means  of  the  parallel  column  pil 
loried  before  the  community.  But  the  community  did 
not  mind  it  a  bit,  and  the  journalist  did  not  either. 
He  prospered  on  amid  those  who  all  knew  what  he 
had  done,  and  when  he  removed  to  another  city  it 
was  to  a  larger  one,  and  to  a  position  of  more  com 
manding  influence,  from  which  he  was  long  conspicu 
ous  in  helping  shape  the  destinies  of  the  nation. 

So  far  as  any  effect  from  these  exposures  was  con 
cerned,  they  were  as  harmless  as  those  exposures  of 
fraudulent  spiritistic  mediums  which  from  time  to 
time  are  supposed  to  shake  the  spiritistic  superstition 
to  its  foundations.  They  really  do  nothing  of  the 
kind ;  the  table-tippings,  rappings,  materializations, 
and  levitations  keep  on  as  before;  and  I  do  not  believe 
that  the  exposure  of  the  novelist  who  has  been  the 
latest  victim  of  the  parallel  column  will  injure  him  a 
jot  in  the  hearts  or  heads  of  his  readers. 


II 

I  am  very  glad  of  it,  being  a  disbeliever  in  punish 
ments  of  all  sorts.  I  am  always  glad  to  have  sinners 
get  off,  for  I  like  to  get  off  from  my  own  sins ;  and  I  have 
a  bad  moment  from  my  sense  of  them  whenever  an 
other's  have  found  him  out.  But  as  yet  I  have  not 
convinced  myself  that  the  sort  of  thing  we  have  been 
considering  is  a  sin  at  all,  for  it  seems  to  deprave  no 
more  than  it  dishonors ;  or  that  it  is  what  the  dictionary 

275 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

(with  very  unnecessary  brutality)  calls  a  "crime" 
and  a  "theft/'  If  it  is  either,  it  is  differently  condi 
tioned,  if  not  differently  natured,  from  all  other  crimes 
and  thefts.  These  may  be  more  or  less  artfully  and 
hopefully  concealed,  but  plagiarism  carries  inevitable 
detection  with  it.  If  you  take  a  man's  hat  or  coat  out 
of  his  hall,  you  may  pawn  it  before  the  police  overtake 
you;  if  you  take  his  horse  out  of  his  stable,  you  may 
ride  it  away  beyond  pursuit  and  sell  it ;  if  you  take  his 
purse  out  of  his  pocket,  you  may  pass  it  to  a  pal  in  the 
crowd,  and  easily  prove  your  innocence.  But  if  you 
take  his  sermon,  or  his  essay,  or  even  his  apposite  re 
flection,  you  cannot  escape  discovery.  The  world  is 
full  of  idle  people  reading  books,  and  they  are  only  too 
glad  to  act  as  detectives;  they  please  their  miserable 
vanity  by  showing  their  alertness,  and  are  proud  to 
bear  witness  against  you  in  the  court  of  parallel  col 
umns.  You  have  no  safety  in  the  obscurity  of  the 
author  from  whom  you  take  your  own ;  there  is  always 
that  most  terrible  reader,  the  reader  of  one  book,  who 
knows  that  very  author,  and  will  the  more  indecently 
hasten  to  bring  you  to  the  bar  because  he  knows  no 
other,  and  wishes  to  display  his  erudition.  A  man 
may  escape  for  centuries  and  3^et  be  found  out.  In 
the  notorious  case  of  William  Shakespeare  the  offender 
seemed  finally  secure  of  his  prey;  and  yet  one  poor 
lady,  who  ended  in  a  lunatic  asylum,  was  able  to  detect 
him  at  last,  and  to  restore  the  goods  to  their  rightful 
owner,  Sir  Francis  Bacon. 

In  spite,  however,  of  this  almost  absolute  certainty 
of  exposure,  plagiarism  goes  on  as  it  has  always  gone 
on ;  and  there  is  no  probability  that  it  will  cease  as  long 
as  there  are  novelists,  senators,  divines,  and  journal 
ists  hard  pressed  for  ideas  which  they  happen  not  to 
have  in  mind  at  the  time,  and  which  they  see  going  to 
waste  elsewhere.  Now  and  then  it  takes  a  more  vio- 

276 


THE   PSYCHOLOGY   OF   PLAGIARISM 

lent  form  and  becomes  a  real  mania,  as  when  the  plagi 
arist  openly  claims  and  urges  his  right  to  a  well-known 
piece  of  literary  property.  When  Mr.  William  Allen 
Butler's  famous  poem  of  "Nothing  to  Wear  "  achieved 
its  extraordinary  popularity,  a  young  girl  declared  and 
apparently  quite  believed  that  she  had  written  it  and 
lost  the  MS.  in  an  omnibus.  All  her  friends  appar 
ently  believed  so,  too ;  and  the  friends  of  the  different 
gentlemen  and  ladies  who  claimed  the  authorship 
of  "Beautiful  Snow"  and  "Rock  Me  to  Sleep"  were 
ready  to  support  them  by  affidavit  against  the  real 
authors  of  those  pretty  worthless  pieces. 

From  all  these  facts  it  must  appear  to  the  philosophic 
reader  that  plagiarism  is  not  the  simple  "crime"  or 
"theft"  that  the  lexicographers  would  have  us  believe. 
It  argues  a  strange  and  peculiar  courage  on  the  part 
of  those  who  commit  it  or  indulge  it,  since  they  are  sure 
of  having  it  brought  home  to  them,  for  they  seem  to 
dread  the  exposure,  though  it  involves  no  punishment 
outside  of  themselves.  Why  do  they  do  it,  or,  having 
done  it,  why  do  they  mind  it,  since  the  public  does  not? 
Their  temerity  and  their  timidity  are  things  almost 
irreconcilable,  and  the  \vhole  position  leaves  one  quite 
puzzled  as  to  what  one  would  do  if  one's  own  pla 
giarisms  were  found  out.  But  this  is  a  mere  question 
of  conduct,  and  of  infinitely  less  interest  than  that  of 
the  nature  or  essence  of  the  thing  itself. 


PURITANISM   IN   AMERICAN   FICTION 

THE  question  whether  the  fiction  which  gives  a 
vivid  impression  of  reality  does  truly  represent 
the  conditions  studied  in  it,  is  one  of  those  inquiries 
to  which  there  is  no  very  final  answer.  The  most 
baffling  fact  of  such  fiction  is  that  its  truths  are  self- 
evident  ;  and  if  you  go  about  to  prove  them  you  are  in 
some  danger  of  shaking  the  convictions  of  those  whom 
they  have  persuaded.  It  will  not  do  to  affirm  any 
thing  wholesale  concerning  them;  a  hundred  exam 
ples  to  the  contrary  present  themselves  if  you  know 
the  ground,  and  you  are  left  in  doubt  of  the  verity  which 
you  cannot  gainsay.  The  most  that  you  can  do  is  to 
appeal  to  your  own  consciousness,  and  that  is  not 
proof  to  anybody  else.  Perhaps  the  best  test  in  this 
difficult  matter  is  the  quality  of  the  art  which  created^ 
the  picture.  Is  it  clear,  simple,  unaffected?  Is  it  true 
to  human  experience  generally?  If  it  is  so,  then  it 
cannot  well  be  false  to  the  special  human  experience  it 
deals  with. 


Not  long  ago  I  heard  of  something  which  amus 
ingly,  which  pathetically,  illustrated  the  sense  of  real 
ity  imparted  by  the  work  of  one  of  our  writers,  whose 
art  is  of  the  kind  I  mean.  A  lady  was  driving  with  a 
young  girl  of  the  lighter-minded  civilization  of  New 
York  through  one  of  those  little  towns  of  the  North 

278 


PURITANISM   IN   AMERICAN    FICTION 

Shore  in  Massachusetts,  where  the  small,  wooden 
houses  cling  to  the  edges  of  the  shallow  bay,  and  the 
schooners  slip  in  and  out  on  the  hidden  channels  of 
the  salt  meadows  as  if  they  were  blown  about  through 
the  tall  grass.  She  tried  to  make  her  feel  the  shy  charm 
of  the  place,  that  almost  subjective  beauty,  which  those 
to  the  manner  born  are  so  keenly  aware  of  in  old-fash 
ioned  New  England  villages;  but  she  found  that  the 
girl  was  not  only  not  looking  at  the  sad-colored  cot 
tages,  with  their  weather  -  worn  shingle  walls,  their 
grassy  door-yards  lit  by  patches  of  summer  bloom, 
and  their  shutterless  windows  with  their  close-drawn 
shades,  but  she  was  resolutely  averting  her  eyes  from 
them,  and  staring  straightforward  until  she  should  be 
out  of  sight  of  them  altogether.  She  said  that  they 
were  terrible,  and  she  knew  that  in  each  of  them  was 
one  of  those  dreary  old  women,  or  disappointed  girls, 
or  unhappy  wives,  or  bereaved  mothers,  she  had  read 
of  in  Miss  Wilkins's  stories. 

She  had  been  too  little  sensible  of  the  humor  which 
forms  the  relief  of  these  stories,  as  it  forms  the  relief 
of  the  bare,  duteous,  conscientious,  deeply  individ 
ualized  lives  portrayed  in  them;  and  no  doubt  this 
cannot  make  its  full  appeal  to  the  heart  of  youth  ach 
ing  for  their  stoical  sorrows.  Without  being  so  very 
young,  I,  too,  have  found  the  humor  hardly  enough 
at  times,  and  if  one  has  not  the  habit  of  experiencing 
support  in  tragedy  itself,  one  gets  through  a  remote 
New  England  village,  at  nightfall,  say,  rather  limp 
than  otherwise,  and  in  quite  the  mood  that  Miss  Wil- 
kins's  bleaker  studies  leave  one  in.  At  mid-day,  or 
in  the  bright  sunshine  of  the  morning,  it  is  quite  pos 
sible  to  fling  off  the  melancholy  which  breathes  the 
same  note  in  the  fact  and  the  fiction ;  and  I  have  even 
had  some  pleasure  at  such  times  in  identifying  this 
or  that  one-story  cottage  with  its  lean-to  as  a  Mary 

279 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

Wilkins  house  and  in  placing  one  of  her  muted  dramas 
in  it.  One  cannot  know  the  people  of  such  places 
without  recognizing  her  types  in  them,  and  one  cannot 
know  New  England  without  owning  the  fidelity  of 
her  stories  to  New  England  character,  though,  as  I 
have  already  suggested,  quite  another  sort  of  stories 
could  be  written  which  should  as  faithfully  repre 
sent  other  phases  of  New  England  village  life. 

To  the  alien  inquirer,  however,  I  should  be  by  no 
means  confident  that  their  truth  would  evince  itself, 
for  the  reason  that  human  nature  is  seldom  on  show 
anywhere.  I  am  perfectly  certain  of  the  truth  of  Tol 
stoy  and  Tourguenief  to  Russian  life,  yet  I  should  not 
be  surprised  if  I  went  through  Russia  and  met  none 
of  their  people.  I  should  be  rather  more  surprised  if 
I  went  through  Italy  and  met  none  of  Verga's  or  Fo- 
gazzaro's,  but  that  would  be  because  I  already  knew 
Italy  a  little.  In  fact,  I  suspect  that  the  last  delight  I 
of  truth  in  any  art  comes  only  to  the  connoisseur  who 
is  as  well  acquainted  with  the  subject  as  the  artist  him 
self.  One  must  not  be  too  severe  in  challenging  the 
truth  of  an  author  to  life ;  and  one  must  bring  a  great 
deal  of  sympathy  and  a  great  deal  of  patience  to  the 
scrutiny.  Types  are  very  backward  and  shrinking 
things,  after  all;  character  is  of  such  a  mimosan  sen 
sibility  that  if  you  seize  it  too  abruptly  its  leaves  are 
apt  to  shut  and  hide  all  that  is  distinctive  in  it ;  so  that 
it  is  not  without  some  risk  to  an  author's  reputation 
for  honesty  that  he  gives  his  readers  the  impression  of 
his  truth. 

II 

The  difficulty  with  characters  in  fiction  is  that  the 
reader  there  finds  them  dramatized;  not  only  their 
actions,  but  also  their  emotions  are  dramatized;  and 

280 


PURITANISM   IN   AMERICAN   FICTION 

the  very  same  sort  of  persons  when  one  meets  them  in 
real  life  are  recreantly  imdramatic.  One  might  go 
through  a  New  England  village  and  see  Mary  Wilkins 
houses  and  Mary  Wilkins  people,  and  yet  not  witness 
a  scene  nor  hear  a  wrord  such  as  one  finds  in  her  tales. 
It  is  only  too  probable  that  the  inhabitants  one  met 
would  say  nothing  quaint  or  humorous,  or  betray  at 
all  the  nature  that  she  reveals  in  them ;  and  yet  I  should 
not  question  her  revelation  on  that  account.  The  life 
of  New  England,  such  as  Miss  Wilkins  deals  with,  and 
Miss  Sarah  0.  Jewett,  and  Miss  Alice  Brown,  is  not  on 
the  surface,  or  not  visibly  so,  except  to  the  accustomed 
eye.  It  is  Puritanism  scarcely  animated  at  all  by  the 
Puritanic  theology.  One  must  not  be  very  positive 
in  such  things,  and  I  may  be  too  bold  in  venturing  to 
say  that  while  the  belief  of  some  New-Englanders  ap 
proaches  this  theology  the  belief  of  most  is  now  far 
from  it;  and  yet  its  penetrating  individualism  so  deep 
ly  influenced  the  New  England  character  that  Puri 
tanism  survives  in  the  moral  and  mental  make  of  the 
people  almost  in  its  early  strength.  Conduct  and 
manner  conform  to  a  dead  religious  ideal;  the  wish 
to  be  sincere,  the  wish  to  be  just,  the  wish  to  be  right 
eous  are  before  the  wrish  to  be  kind,  merciful,  humble. 
A  people  are  not  a  chosen  people  for  half  a  dozen  gen 
erations  without  acquiring  a  spiritual  pride  that  re 
mains  with  them  long  after  they  cease  to  believe  them 
selves  chosen.  They  are  often  stiffened  in  the  neck 
and  they  are  often  hardened  in  the  heart  by  it,  to  the 
point  of  making  them  angular  and  cold;  but  they  are 
of  an  inveterate  responsibility  to  a  power  higher  than 
themselves,  and  they  are  strengthened  for  any  fate. 
They  are  what  we  see  in  the  stories  which,  perhaps, 
hold  the  first  place  in  American  fiction. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  religion  of  New  England  is 
not  now  so  Puritanical  as  that  of  many  parts  of  the 

281 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

South  and  West,  and  yet  the  inherited  Puritanism 
stamps  the  New  England  manner,  and  differences  it 
from  the  manner  of  the  straightest  sects  elsewhere. 
There  was,  however,  always  a  revolt  against  Puritan 
ism  when  Puritanism  was  severest  and  securest;  this 
resulted  in  types  of  shiftlessness  if  not  wickedness, 
which  have  not  yet  been  duly  studied,  and  which  would 
make  the  fortune  of  some  novelist  who  cared  to  do  a 
fresh  thing.  There  is  also  a  sentimental^,  or  pseudo- 
emotionality  (I  have  not  the  right  phrase  for  it),  which 
awaits  full  recognition  in  fiction.  This  efflorescence 
from  the  dust  of  systems  and  creeds,  carried  into  nat 
ures  left  vacant  by  the  ancestral  doctrine,  has  scarce 
ly  been  noticed  by  the  painters  of  New  England  man 
ners.  It  is  often  a  last  state  of  Unitarianism,  which 
prevailed  in  the  larger  towns  and  cities  when  the  Cal- 
vinistic  theology  ceased  to  be  dominant,  and  it  is  often 
an  effect  of  the  spiritualism  so  common  in  New  Eng 
land,  and,  in  fact,  everywhere  in  America.  Then, 
there  is  a  wide-spread  love  of  literature  in  the  country 
towns  and  villages  which  has  in  great  measure  re 
placed  the  old  interest  in  dogma,  and  which  forms 
with  us  an  author's  closest  appreciation,  if  not  his 
best.  But  as  yet  little  hint  of  all  this  has  got  into  the 
short  stories,  and  still  less  of  that  larger  intellectual 
life  of  New  England,  or  that  exalted  beauty  of  char 
acter  which  tempts  one  to  say  that  Puritanism  was  a 
blessing  if  it  made  the  New-Englanders  what  they  are ; 
though  one  can  always  be  glad  not  to  have  lived  among 
them  in  the  disciplinary  period.  Boston,  the  capital 
of  that  New  England  nation  which  is  fast  losing  itself 
in  the  American  nation,  is  no  longer  of  its  old  literary 
primacy,  and  yet  most  of  our  right  thinking,  our  high 
thinking,  still  begins  there,  and  qualifies  the  thinking 
of  the  country  at  large.  The  good  causes,  the  generous 
causes,  are  first  befriended  there,  and  in  a  wholesome 

282 


PURITANISM    IN    AMERICAN    FICTION 

sort  the  New  England  culture,  as  well  as  the  New  Eng 
land  conscience,  has  imparted  itself  to  the  American 
people. 

Even  the  power  of  writing  short  stories,  which  we 
suppose  ourselves  to  have  in  such  excellent  degree, 
has  spread  from  New  England.  That  is,  indeed,  the 
home  of  the  American  short  story,  and  it  has  there  been 
brought  to  such  perfection  in  the  work  of  Miss  Wil- 
kins,  of  Miss  Jewett,  of  Miss  Brown,  and  of  that  most 
faithful,  forgotten  painter  of  manners,  Mrs.  Rose  Terry 
Cook,  that  it  presents  upon  the  whole  a  truthful  picture 
of  New  England  village  life  in  some  of  its  more  obvious 
phases.  I  say  obvious  because  I  must,  but  I  have  al 
ready  said  that  this  is  a  life  which  is  very  little  obvious ; 
and  I  should  not  blame  any  one  who  brought  the  por 
trait  to  the  test  of  reality,  and  found  it  exaggerated, 
overdrawn,  and  unnatural,  though  I  should  be  per 
fectly  sure  that  such  a  critic  was  wrong. 


THE  WHAT  AND  THE  HOW  IN  ART 

ONE  of  the  things  always  enforcing  itself  upon 
the  consciousness  of  the  artist  in  any  sort  is 
the  fact  that  those  whom  artists  work  for  rarely  care 
for  their  work  artistically.  They  care  for  it  morally, 
personally,  partially.  I  suspect  that  criticism  itself 
has  rather  a  muddled  preference  for  the  what  over  the 
how,  and  that  it  is  always  haunted  by  a  philistine 
question  of  the  material  when  it  should,  aesthetically 
speaking,  be  concerned  solely  with  the  form. 


The  other  night  at  the  theatre  I  was  witness  of  a 
curious  and  amusing  illustration  of  my  point.  They 
were  playing  a  most  soul -filling  melodrama,  of  the 
sort  which  gives  you  assurance  from  the  very  first 
that  there  will  be  no  trouble  in  the  end,  but  everything 
will  come  out  just  as  it  should,  no  matter  what  ob 
stacles  oppose  themselves  in  the  course  of  the  action. 
An  over-ruling  Providence,  long  accustomed  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  stage,  could  not  fail  to  intervene  at 
the  critical  moment  in  behalf  of  innocence  and  virtue, 
and  the  spectator  never  had  the  least  occasion  for 
anxiety.  Not  unnaturally  there  was  a  black-hearted 
villain  in  the  piece;  so  very  black-hearted  that  he 
seemed  not  to  have  a  single  good  impulse  from  first 
to  last.  Yet  he  was,  in  the  keeping  of  the  stage  Prov 
idence,  as  harmless  as  a  blank  cartridge,  in  spite 

284 


THE  WHAT  AND  THE  HOW  IN  ART 

of  his  deadl}7  aims.  He  accomplished  no  more  mis 
chief,  in  fact,  than  if  all  his  intents  had  been  of  the 
best;  except  for  the  satisfaction  afforded  by  the  edi 
fying  spectacle  of  his  defeat  and  shame,  he  need  not 
have  been  in  the  play  at  all;  and  one  might  almost 
have  felt  sorry  for  him,  he  was  so  continually  baffled. 
But  this  was  not  enough  for  the  audience,  or  for  that 
part  of  it  which  filled  the  gallery  to  the  roof.  Perhaps 
he  was  such  an  uncommonly  black-hearted  villain, 
so  very,  very  cold-blooded  in  his  wickedness  that  the 
justice  unsparingly  dealt  out  to  him  by  the  dramatist 
could  not  suffice.  At  any  rate,  the  gallery  took  such 
a  vivid  interest  in  his  punishment  that  it  had  out 
the  actor  who  impersonated  the  wretch  between  all 
the  acts,  and  hissed  him  throughout  his  deliberate 
passage  across  the  stage  before  the  curtain.  The 
hisses  were  not  at  all  for  the  actor,  but  altogether  for 
the  character.  The  performance  was  fairly  good, 
quite  as  good  as  the  performance  of  any  virtuous  part 
in  the  piece,  and  easily  up  to  the  level  of  other  villan- 
ous  performances  (I  never  find  much  nature  in  them, 
perhaps  because  there  is  not  much  nature  in  villany 
itself ;  that  is,  villany  pure  and  simple) ;  but  the  mere 
conception  of  the  wickedness  this  bad  man  had  at 
tempted  was  too  much  for  an  audience  of  the_ay_er7i  -' 
age  popular  goodness.  It  was  only  after  he  had  taken 
poison,  and  fallen  dead  before  their  eyes,  that  the 
spectators  forbore  to  visit  him  with  a  lively  proof  of 
their  abhorrence;  apparently  they  did  not  care  to  "  give 
him  a  realizing  sense  that  there  was  a  punishment 
after  death,"  as  the  man  in  Lincoln's  story  did  with 
the  dead  dog. 

II 

The  whole  affair  was  very  amusing  at  first,  but  it 
has  since  put  me  upon  thinking  (I  like  to  be  put  upon 

285 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

thinking ;  the  eighteenth-century  essayists  were)  that 
the  attitude  of  the  audience  towards  this  deplorable 
reprobate  is  really  the  attitude  of  most  readers  of 
books,  lookers  at  pictures  and  statues,  listeners  to 
music,  and  so  on  through  the  whole  list  of  the  arts. 
It  is  absolutely  different  from  the  artist's  attitude, 

''from  the  connoisseur's  attitude;  it  is  quite  irreconcil 
able  with  their  attitude,  and  yet  I  wonder  if  in  the  end 
\^xit  is  not  what  the  artist  works  for.     Art  is  not  produced 
for  artists,  or  even  for  connoisseurs;  it  is  produced 

r-4or  the  general,  who  can  never  view  it  otherwise  than 
morally,  personally,  partially,  from  their  associations 

i    and  preconceptions. 

Whether  the  effect  with  the  general  is  what  the  artist 
works  for  or  not,  he  does  not  succeed  without  it.    Their 

t-^rJrute  liking  or  misliking  is  the  final  test;  it  is  uni 
versal  suffrage  that  elects,  after  all.  Only,  in  some 
cases  of  this  sort  the  polls  do  not  close  at  four  o'clock  on 
the  first  Tuesday  after  the  first  Monday  of  November, 

i,  but  remain  open  forever,  and  the  voting  goes  on.  Still, 
even  the  first  day's  canvass  is  important,  or  at  least 

^  -significant.  It  will  not  do  for  the  artist  to  electioneer, 
but  if  he  is  beaten,  he  ought  to  ponder  the  causes  of 
his  defeat,  and  question  how  he  has  failed  to  touch 
the  chord  of  universal  interest.  He  is  in  the  world 
to  make  beauty  and  truth  evident  to  his  fellow-men, 
who  are  as  a  rule  incredibly  stupid  and  ignorant  of 
both,  but  whose  judgment  he  must  nevertheless  not 
despise.  If  he  can  make  something  that  they  will 
cheer,  or  something  that  they  will  hiss,  he  may  not 
have  done  any  great  thing,  but  if  he  has  made  some 
thing  that  they  will  neither  cheer  nor  hiss,  he  may 
well  have  his  misgivings,  no  matter  how  well,  how 
finely,  how  truly  he  has  done  the  thing. 

This  is  very  humiliating,  but  a  tacit  snub  to  one's 
artist-pride  such  as  one  gets  from  public  silence  is 

286 


THE  WHAT  AND  THE  HOW  IN  ART 

not  a  bad  thing  for  one.  Not  long  ago  I  was  talking 
about  pictures  with  a  painter,  a  very  great  painter, 
to  my  thinking;  one  whose  pieces  give  me  the  same 
feeling  I  have  from  reading  poetry;  and  I  was  ex 
cusing  myself  to  him  with  respect  to  art,  and  perhaps 
putting  on  a  little  more  modesty  than  I  felt.  I  said 
that  I  could  enjoy  pictures  only  on  the  literary  side, 
and  could  get  no  answer  from  my  soul  to  those  ex 
cellences  of  handling  and  execution  which  seemed 
chiefly  to  interest  painters.  He  replied  that  it  was  a 
confession  of  weakness  in  a  painter  if  he  appealed 
merely  or  mainly  to  technical  knowledge  in  the  spec 
tator;  that  he  narrowed  his  field  and  dwarfed  his  work 
by  it;  and  that  if  he  painted  for  painters  merely,  or 
for  the  connoisseurs  of  painting,  he  was  denying  his 
office,  which  was  to  say  something  clear  and  appreci 
able^  all  sorts  of  men.  Jn  the  terms  of  art.  He  even 
insisted  that  a  picture  ought  to  tell  a  story. 

The  difficulty  in  humbling  one's  self  to  this  view  of~\ 
art  is  in  the  ease  with  which  one  may  please  the  gen-- 
eral  by  art  which  is  no  art.  Neither  the  play  nor 
the  playing  that  I  saw  at  the  theatre  when  the  actor 
was  hissed  for  the  wickedness  of  the  villain  he  was 
personating,  was  at  all  fine;  and  yet  I  perceived,  on 
reflection,  that  they  had  achieved  a  supreme  effect.  If 
I  may  be  so  confidential,  I  will  say  that  I  should  be 
very  sorry  to  have  written  that  piece;  yet  I  should  be 
very  proud  if,  on  the  level  I  chose  and  with  the  quality 
I  cared  for,  I  could  invent  a  villain  that  the  populace 
would  have  out  and  hiss  for  his  surpassing  wicked 
ness.  In  other  words,  I  think  it  a  thousand  pities 
whenever  an  artist  gets  so  far  away  from  the  general, 
so  far  within  himself  or  a  little  circle  of  amateurs,  that 
his  highest  and  best  work  awakens  no  response  in 
the  multitude.  I  am  afraid  this  is  rather  the  danger 
of  the  arts  among  us,  and  how  to  escape  it  is  not  so 

287 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

very  plain.  It  makes  one  sick  and  sorry  often  to  see 
how  cheaply  the  applause  of  the  common  people  is 
won.  It  is  not  an  infallible  test  of  merit,  but  if  it  is 
wanting  to  any  performance,  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
it  is  not  the  greatest  performance. 


in 

The  paradox  lies  in  wait  here,  as  in  most  other  hu 
man  affairs,  to  confound  us,  and  we  try  to  baffle  it, 
in  this  way  and  in  that.  We  talk,  for  instance,  of 
poetry  for  poets,  and  we  fondly  imagine  that  this  is 
different  from  talking  of  cookery  for  cooks.  Poetry  is 
not  made  for  poets;  they  have  enough  poetry  of  their 
own,  but  it  is  made  for  people  who  are  not  poets.  If 
it  does  not  please  these,  it  may  still  be  poetry,  but  it 
is  poetry  which  has  failed  of  its  truest  office.  It  is 
none  the  less  its  truest  office  because  some  very  wretch 
ed  verse  seems  often  to  do  it. 

The  logic  of  such  a  fact  is  not  that  the  poet  should 
try  to  achieve  this  truest  office  of  his  art  by  means  of 
doggerel,  but  that  he  should  study  how  and  where 
and  why  the  beauty  and  the  truth  he  has  made  manifest 
are  wanting  in  universal  interest,  in  human  appeal. 
Leaving  the  drama  out  of  the  question,  and  the  theatre 
which  seems  now  to  be  seeking  only  the  favor  of  the 
y  dull  rich,  I  believe  that  there  never  was  a  time  or  a 
\/\  race  more  open  to  the  impressions  of  beauty  and  of 
I  truth  than  ours.  The  artist  who  feels  their  divine 
charm,  and  longs  to  impart  it,  has  now  and  here  a 
chance  to  impart  it  more  widely  than  ever  artist  had 
in  the  world  before.  Of  course,  the  means  of  reach 
ing  the  widest  range  of  humanity  are  the  simple  and 
the  elementary,  but  there  is  no  telling  when  the  com 
plex  and  the  recondite  may  not  universally  please. 

288 


THE  WHAT  AND  THE  HOW  IN  ART 

The  art  is  to  make  them  plain  to  every  one,  for  every 
one  has  them  in  him.  Lowell  used  to  say  that  Shake 
speare  was  subtle,  but  in  letters  a  foot  high. 

The  painter,  sculptor,  or  author  who  pleases  the 
polite  only  has  a  success  to  be  proud  of  as  far  as  it 
goes,  and  to  be  ashamed  of  that  it  goes  no  further. 
He  need  not  shrink  from  giving  pleasure  to  the  vulgar',  -x 
because  bad  art  pleases  them.  It  is  part  of  his  reason 
for  being  that  he  should  please  them,  too;  and  if  he 
does  not  it  is  a  proof  that  he  is  wanting  in  force,  how 
ever  much  he  abounds  in  fineness.  Who  would  not 
wish  his  picture  to  draw  a  crowd  about  it?  Who  would? 
not  wish  his  novel  to  sell  five  hundred  thousand  copies^  ^ 
for  reasons  besides  the  sordid  love  of  gain  which  I 
am  told  governs  novelists?  One  should  not  really 
wish  it  any  the  less  because  chromos  and  historical 
romances  are  popular. 

Sometime,  I  believe,  the  artist  and  his  public  wi 
draw    nearer    together   in   a   mutual    understanding, 
though  perhaps  not  in  our  present  conditions.     I  put 
that  understanding  off  till  the  good  time  when  life  • 
shall  be  more  than  living,  more  even  than  the  question^! 
of  getting  a  living;  but  in  the  mean  time  I  think  that ; 
the  artist  might  very  well  study  the  springs  of  feeling 
in  others;  and  if  I  were  a  dramatist  I  think  I  should 
quite  humbly  go  to  that  play  where  they  hiss  the  villain  j 
for  his  villany,  and  inquire  how  his  wickedness  had 
been  made  so  appreciable,  so  vital,  so  personal.     Not 
being  a  dramatist,  I  still  cannot  indulge  the  greatest 
contempt  of  that  play  and  its  public. 
19 


POLITICS   OF   AMERICAN   AUTHORS 

NO  thornier  theme  could  well  be  suggested  than  I 
was  once  invited  to  consider  by  an  Englishman 
who  wished  to  know  how  far  American  politicians  were 
scholars,  and  how  far  American  authors  took  part  in 
politics.  In  my  mind  I  first  revolted  from  the  inquiry, 
and  then  I  cast  about,  in  the  fascination  it  began  to 
have  for  me/  to  see  how  I  might  handle  it  and  prick 
myself  leas/  In  a  sort,  which  it  would  take  too  long 
to  set  forth/  politics  are  very  intimate  matters  with  us, 
and  if  ony  were  to  deal  quite  frankly  with  the  politics 
of  a  contemporary  author,  one  might  accuse  one's  self 
of  an  unwarrantable  personality.  So,  in  what  I  shall 
have  to' say  in  answer  to  the  question  asked  me,  I  shall 
seek  above  all  things  not  to  be  quite  frank. 


My  uncandor  need  not  be  so  jealously  guarded  in 
speaking  of  authors  no  longer  living.  Not  to  go  too 
far  back  among  these,  it  is  perfectly  safe  to  say  that 
when  the  slavery  question  began  to  divide  all  kinds 
of  men  among  us,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Cur 
tis,  Emerson,  and  Bryant  more  or  less  promptly  and 
openly  took  sides  against  slavery.  Holmes  was  very 
much  later  in  doing  so,  but  he  made  up  for  his  long 
delay  by  his  final  strenuousness ;  as  for  Hawthorne,  he 
was,  perhaps,  too  essentially  a  spectator  of  life  to  be 

290 


POLITICS   OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 

classed  with  either  party,  though  his  associations,  if  not 
his  sympathies,  were  with  the  Northern  men  who  had 
Southern  principles  until  the  civil  war  came.  After 
the  war,  when  our  political  questions  ceased  to  be 
moral  and  emotional  and  became  economic  and  socio 
logical,  literary  men  found  their  standing  with  greater 
difficulty.  They  remained  mostly  Republicans,  be 
cause  the  Republicans  were  the  anti-slavery  party, 
and  were  still  waging  war  against  slavery  in  their 
nerves. 

I  should  say  that  they  also  continued  very  largely 
the  emotional  tradition  in  politics,  and  it  is  doubtful 
if  in  the  nature  of  things  the  politics  of  literary  men 
can  ever  be  otherwise  than  emotional.  In  fact,  though 
the  questions  may  no  longer  be  so,  the  politics  of  vast 
ly  the  greater  number  of  Americans  are  so.  Nothing 
else  would  account  for  the  fact  that  during  the  last 
ten  or  fifteen  years  men  have  remained  Republicans 
and  remained  Democrats  upon  no  tangible  issues  ex 
cept  of  office,  which  could  practically  concern  only  a 
few  hundreds  or  thousands  out  of  every  million  voters. 
Party  fealty  is  praised  as  a  virtue,  and  disloyalty  to 
party  is  treated  as  a  species  of  incivism  next  in  wicked 
ness  to  treason.  If  any  one  were  to  ask  me  why  then 
American  authors  were  not  active  in  American  politics, 
as  they  once  were,  I  should  feel  a  certain  diffidence  in 
replying  that  the  question  of  other  people's  accession 
to  office  was,  however  emotional,  unimportant  to  them 
as  compared  with  literary  questions.  I  should  have 
the  more  diffidence  because  it  might  be  retorted  that 
literary  men  were  too  unpractical  for  politics  when 
they  did  not  deal  with  moral  issues. 

Such  a  retort  would  be  rather  mild  and  civil,  as 
things  go,  and  might  even  be  regarded  as  compliment 
ary.  It  is  not  our  custom  to  be  tender  with  any  one 
who  doubts  if  any  actuality  is  right,  or  might  not  be 

291 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

bettered,  especially  in  public  affairs.  We  are  apt  to 
call  such  a  one  out  of  his  name  and  to  punish  him  for 
opinions  he  has  never  held.  This  may  be  a  better 
reason  than  either  given  why  authors  do  not  take  part 
in  politics  with  us.  They  are  a  thin-skinned  race,  fas 
tidious  often,  and  always  averse  to  hard  knocks ;  they 
are  rather  modest,  too,  and  distrust  their  fitness  to  lead, 
when  they  have  quite  a  firm  faith  in  their  convictions. 
They  hesitate  to  urge  these  in  the  face  of  practical 
politicians,  who  have  a  confidence  in  their  ability  to 
settle  all  affairs  of  State  not  surpassed  even  by  that  of 
business  men  in  dealing  with  economic  questions. 

I  think  it  is  a  pity  that  our  authors  do  not  go  into 
politics  at  least  for  the  sake  of  the  material  it  would 
yield  them;  but  really  they  do  not.  Our  politics  are 
often  vulgar,  but  they  are  very  picturesque;  yet,  so 
far,  our  fiction  has  shunned  them  even  more  decidedly 
than  it  has  shunned  our  good  society — which  is  not 
picturesque  or  apparently  anything  but  a  tiresome 
adaptation  of  the  sort  of  drama  that  goes  on  abroad 
under  the  same  name.  In  nearly  the  degree  that  our 
authors  have  dealt  with  our  politics  as  material,  they 
have  given  the  practical  politicians  only  too  much  rea 
son  to  doubt  their  insight  and  their  capacity  to  un 
derstand  the  mere  machinery,  the  simplest  motives,  of 
political  life. 

II 

There  are  exceptions,  of  course,  and  if  my  promise 
of  reticence  did  not  withhold  me  I  might  name  some 
striking  ones.  Privately  and  unprofessionally,  I  think 
our  authors  take  as  vivid  an  interest  in  public  affairs 
as  any  other  class  of  our  citizens,  and  I  should  be  sorry 
to  think  that  they  took  a  less  intelligent  interest.  Now 
and  then,  but  only  very  rarely,  one  of  them  speaks  out, 

292 


POLITICS   OF  AMERICAN   AUTHORS 

and  usually  on  the  unpopular  side.  In  this  event  he 
is  spared  none  of  the  penalties  with  which  we  like  to 
visit  difference  of  opinion;  rather  they  are  accumu 
lated  on  him. 

Such  things  are  not  serious,  and  they  are  such  as 
no  serious  man  need  shrink  from,  but  they  have  a  bear 
ing  upon  what  I  am  trying  to  explain,  and  in  a  certain 
measure  they  account  for  a  certain  attitude  in  our  lit 
erary  men.  No  one  likes  to  have  stones,  not  to  say 
mud,  thrown  at  him,  though  they  are  not  meant  to 
hurt  him  badly  and  may  be  partly  thrown  in  joke. 
But  it  is  pretty  certain  that  if  a  man  not  in  politics  takes 
them  seriously,  he  will  have  more  or  less  mud,  not  to 
say  stones,  thrown  at  him.  He  might  burlesque  or 
caricature  them,  or  misrepresent  them,  with  safety; 
but  if  he  spoke  of  public  questions  with  heart  and  con 
science,  he  could  not  do  it  with  impunity,  unless  he 
were  authorized  to  do  so  by  some  practical  relation  to 
them.  I  do  not  mean  that  then  he  would  escape;  but 
in  this  country,  where  there  were  once  supposed  to  be 
no  classes,  people  are  more  strictly  classified  than  in 
any  other.  Business  to  the  business  man,  law  to  the 
lawyer,  medicine  to  the  physician,  politics  to  the  poli 
tician,  arid  letters  to  the  literary  man ;  that  is  the  rule. 
One  is  not  expected  to  transcend  his  function,  and 
commonly  one  does  not.  We  keep  each  to  his  last,  as 
if  there  were  not  human  interests,  civic  interests,  which 
had  a  higher  claim  than  the  last  upon  our  thinking 
and  feeling.  The  tendency  has  grown  upon  us  sev 
erally  and  collectively  through  the  long  persistence  of 
our  prosperity;  if  public  affairs  were  going  ill,  private 
affairs  were  going  so  well  that  we  did  not  mind  the 
others;  and  we  Americans  are,  I  think,  meridional  in 
our  improvidence.  We  are  so  essentially  of  to-day 
that  we  behave  as  if  to-morrow  no  more  concerned  us 
than  yesterday.  We  have  taught  ourselves  to  believe 

293 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

that  it  will  all  come  out  right  in  the  end  so  long  that 
we  have  come  to  act  upon  our  belief ;  we  are  optimistic 
fatalists, 

III 

The  turn  which  our  politics  have  taken  towards 
economics,  if  I  may  so  phrase  the  rise  of  the  questions 
of  labor  and  capital,  has  not  largely  attracted  literary 
men.  It  is  doubtful  whether  Edward  Bellamy  him 
self,  whose  fancy  of  better  conditions  has  become  the 
abiding  faith  of  vast  numbers  of  Americans,  supposed 
that  he  was  entering  the  field  of  practical  politics,  or 
dreamed  of  influencing  elections  by  his  hopes  of  eco 
nomic  equality.  But  he  virtually  founded  the  Populist 
party,  which,  as  the  vital  principle  of  the  Democratic 
party,  came  so  near  electing  its  candidate  for  the  Presi 
dency  some  years  ago;  and  he  is  to  be  named  first 
among  our  authors  who  have  dealt  with  politics  on  their 
more  human  side  since  the  days  of  the  old  anti-slavery 
agitation.  Without  too  great  disregard  of  the  reticence 
concerning  the  living  which  I  promised  myself,  I  may 
mention  Dr.  Edward  Everett  Hale  and  Colonel  Thomas 
Wentworth  Higginson  as  prominent  authors  who  en 
couraged  the  Nationalist  movement  eventuating  in 
Populism,  though  they  were  never  Populists.  It  may 
be  interesting  to  note  that  Dr.  Hale  and  Colonel  Hig 
ginson,  who  later  came  together  in  their  sociological 
sympathies,  were  divided  by  the  schism  of  1884,  when 
the  first  remained  with  the  Republicans  and  the  last 
went  off  to  the  Democrats.  More  remotely,  Colonel 
Higginson  was  anti- slavery  almost  to  the  point  of 
Abolitionism,  and  he  led  a  negro  regiment  in  the  war. 
Dr.  Hale  was  of  those  who  were  less  radically  opposed 
to  slavery  before  the  war,  but  hardly  so  after  it  came. 
Since  the  war  a  sort  of  refluence  of  the  old  anti-slavery 

294 


POLITICS   OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 

politics  carried  from  his  moorings  in  Southern  tradi 
tion  Mr.  George  W.  Cable,  who,  against  the  white  sen 
timent  of  his  section,  sided  with  the  former  slaves,  and 
would,  if  the  indignant  renunciation  of  his  fellow- 
Southerners  could  avail,  have  consequently  ceased  to 
be  the  first  of  Southern  authors,  though  he  would  still 
have  continued  the  author  of  at  least  one  of  the  greatest 
American  novels. 

If  I  must  burn  my  ships  behind  me  in  alleging  these 
modern  instances,  as  I  seem  really  to  be  doing,  I  may 
mention  Mr.  R.  W.  Gilder,  the  poet,  as  an  author  who 
has  taken  part  in  the  politics  of  municipal  reform. 
[Mr.  Hamlin  Garland  has  been  known  from  the  first  as 
a  zealous  George  man,  or  single-taxer.  Mr.  John  Hay, 
Mr.  Theodore  Roosevelt,  and  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge 
are  Republican  politicians,  as  well  as  recognized  liter 
ary  men.  Mr.  Joel  Chandler  Harris,  when  not  writing 
Uncle  Remus,  writes  political  articles  in  a  leading 
Southern  journal.  Mark  Twain  is  a  leading  anti-im 
perialist. 

IV 

I  am  not  sure  whether  I  have  made  out  a  case  for 
our  authors  or  against  them;  perhaps  I  have  not  done 
so  badly ;  but  I  have  certainly  not  tried  to  be  exhaust 
ive;  the  exhaustion  is  so  apt  to  extend  from  the  sub 
ject  to  the  reader,  and  I  wish  to  leave  him  in  a  condition 
to  judge  for  himself  whether  American  literary  men 
take  part  in  American  politics  or  not.  I  think  they 
bear  their  share,  in  the  quieter  sort  of  way  which  we 
hope  (it  may  be  too  fondly)  is  the  American  way.  They 
are  none  of  them  politicians  in  the  Latin  sort.  Few, 
if  any,  of  our  statesmen  have  come  forward  with  small 
volumes  of  verse  in  their  hands  as  they  used  to  do  in 
Spain ;  none  of  our  poets  or  historians  have  been  chosen 

295 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

Presidents  of  the  republic  as  has  happened  to  their 
French  confreres ;  no  great  novelist  of  ours  has  been 
exiled  as  Victor  Hugo  was,  or  atrociously  mishandled 
as  Zola  has  been,  though  I  have  no  doubt  that  if,  for 
instance,  one  had  once  said  the  Spanish  war  wrong  he 
would  be  pretty  generally  conspue.  They  have  none  of 
them  reached  the  heights  of  political  power,  as  several 
English  authors  have  done;  but  they  have  often  been 
ambassadors,  ministers,  and  consuls,  though  they  may 
not  often  have  been  appointed  for  political  reasons. 
I  fancy  they  discharge  their  duties  in  voting  rather 
faithfully,  though  they  do  not  often  take  part  in  cau 
cuses  or  conventions. 

As  for  the  other  half  of  the  question — how  far  Amer 
ican  politicians  are  scholars — one's  first  impulse  would 
be  to  say  that  they  never  were  so.  But  I  have  always 
had  an  heretical  belief  that  there  were  snakes  in  Ireland  ; 
and  it  may  be  some  such  disposition  to  question  au 
thority  that  keeps  me  from  yielding  to  this  impulse. 
The  law  of  demand  and  supply  alone  ought  to  have 
settled  the  question  -in  favor  of  the  presence  of  the 
scholar  in  our  politics,  there  has  been  such  a  cry  for 
him  among  us  for  almost  a  generation  past.  Perhaps 
the  response  has  not  been  very  direct,  but  I  imagine  that 
our  politicians  have  never  been  quite  so  destitute  of 
scholarship  as  they  would  sometimes  make  appear. 
I  do  not  think  so  many  of  them  now  write  a  good  style, 
or  speak  a  good  style,  as  the  politicians  of  forty,  or 
fifty,  or  sixty  years  ago;  but  this  may  be  merely  part 
of  the  impression  of  the  general  worsening  of  things, 
familiar  after  middle  life  to  every  one's  experience, 
from  the  beginning  of  recorded  time.  If  something 
not  so  literary  is  meant  by  scholarship,  if  a  study  of 
finance,  of  economics,  of  international  affairs  is  in 
question,  it  seems  to  go  on  rather  more  to  their  own 
satisfaction  than  that  of  their  critics.  But  without 

296 


POLITICS   OF  AMERICAN  AUTHORS 

being  always  very  proud  of  the  result,  and  without 
professing  to  know  the  facts  very  profoundly,  one 
may  still  suspect  that  under  an  outside  by  no  means 
academic  there  is  a  process  of  thinking  in  our  states 
men  which  is  not  so  loose,  not  so  unscientific,  and  not 
even  so  unscholarly  as  it  might  be  supposed.  It  is 
not  the  effect  of  specific  training,  and  yet  it  is  the  effect 
of  training.  I  do  not  find  that  the  matters  dealt  with 
are  anywhere  in  the  world  intrusted  to  experts;  and 
in  this  sense  scholarship  has  not  been  called  to  the  aid 
of  our  legislation  or  administration;  but  still  I  should 
not  like  to  say  that  none  of  our  politicians  were  scholars. 
That  would  be  offensive,  and  it  might  not  be  true.  In 
fact,  I  can  think  of  several  whom  I  should  be  tempted 
to  call  scholars  if  I  were  not  just  here  recalled  to  a  sense 
of  my  purpose  not  to  deal  quite  frankly  with  this  in 
quiry. 


STORAGE 

IT  has  been  the  belief  of  certain  kindly  philosophers 
that  if  the  one  half  of  mankind  knew  how  the 
other  half  lived,  the  two  halves  might  be  brought  to 
gether  in  a  family  affection  not  now  so  observable 
in  human  relations.  Probably  if  this  knowledge 
were  perfect,  there  would  still  be  things  to  bar  the 
perfect  brotherhood;  and  yet  the  knowledge  itself  is 
so  interesting,  if  not  so  salutary  as  it  has  been  imag 
ined,  that  one  can  hardly  refuse  to  impart  it  if  one 
has  it,  and  can  reasonably  hope,  in  the  advantage  of 
the  ignorant,  to  find  one's  excuse  with  the  better  in 
formed. 


City  and  country  are  still  so  widely  apart  in  every 
civilization  that  one  can  safely  count  upon  a  reciprocal 
strangeness  in  many  every-day  things.  For  instance, 
in  the  country,  when  people  break  up  house-keeping, 
they  sell  their  household  goods  and  gods,  as  they  did 
in  cities  fifty  or  a  hundred  years  ago ;  but  now  in  cities 
they  simply  store  them;  and  vast  warehouses  in  all 
the  principal  towns  have  been  devoted  to  their  storage. 
The  warehouses  are  of  all  types,  from  dusty  lofts  over 
stores,  and  ammoniacal  lofts  over  stables,  to  buildings 
offering  acres  of  space,  and  carefully  planned  for  the 
purpose.  They  are  more  or  less  fire-proof,  slow-burn 
ing,  or  briskly  combustible,  like  the  dwellings  they 
have  devastated.  But  the  modern  tendency  is  to  a 
type  where  flames  do  not  destroy,  nor  moth  corrupt, 

298 


STORAGE 

nor  thieves  break  through  and  steal.  Such  a  ware 
house  is  a  city  in  itself,  laid  out  in  streets  and  avenues, 
with  the  private  tenements  on  either  hand  duly  num 
bered,  and  accessible  only  to  the  tenants  or  their  order. 
The  aisles  are  concreted,  the  doors  are  iron,  and  the 
roofs  are  ceiled  with  iron ;  the  whole  place  is  heated  by 
steam  and  lighted  by  electricity.  Behind  the  iron 
doors,  which  in  the  New  York  warehouses  must  num 
ber  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  throughout  all  our 
other  cities,  millions,  the  furniture  of  a  myriad  house 
holds  is  stored — the  effects  of  people  who  have  gone 
to  Europe,  or  broken  up  house-keeping  provisionally 
or  definitively,  or  have  died,  or  been  divorced.  They 
are  the  dead  bones  of  homes,  or  their  ghosts,  or  their 
yet  living  bodies  held  in  hypnotic  trances,  destined 
again  in  some  future  time  to  animate  some  house  or 
flat  anew.  In  certain  cases  the  spell  lasts  for  many 
years,  in  others  for  a  few,  and  in  others  yet  it  prolongs 
itself  indefinitely. 

I  may  mention  the  case  of  one  owner  whom  I  saw 
visiting  the  warehouse  to  take  out  the  household  stuff 
that  had  lain  there  a  long  fifteen  years.  He  had  been 
all  that  while  in  Europe,  expecting  any  day  to  come 
home  and  begin  life  again  in  his  own  land.  That 
dream  had  passed,  and  now  he  was  taking  his  stuff 
out  of  storage  and  shipping  it  to  Italy.  I  did  not  envy 
him  his  feelings  as  the  parts  of  his  long-dead  past  rose 
round  him  in  formless  resurrection.  It  was  not  that 
they  were  all  broken  or  defaced.  On  the  contrary, 
they  were  in  a  state  of  preservation  far  more  heart 
breaking  than  any  decay.  In  well-managed  storage 
warehouses  the  things  are  handled  with  scrupulous 
care,  and  they  are  so  packed  into  the  appointed  rooms 
that  if  not  disturbed  they  could  suffer  little  harm  in 
fifteen  or  fifty  years.  The  places  are  wonderfully 
well  kept,  and  if  you  will  visit  them,  say  in  midwinter, 

299 


LITERATURE    AND    LIFE 

after  the  fall  influx  of  furniture  has  all  been  hidden 
away  behind  the  iron  doors  of  the  several  cells,  you  shall 
find  their  far-branching  corridors  scrupulously  swept 
and  dusted,  and  shall  walk  up  and  down  their  concrete 
length  with  some  such  sense  of  secure  finality  as  you 
would  experience  in  pacing  the  aisle  of  your  family  vault. 
That  is  what  it  comes  to.  One  may  feign  that  these 
storage  warehouses  are  cities,  but  they  are  really  cem 
eteries:  sad  columbaria  on  whose  shelves  are  stowed 
exanimate  things  once  so  intimately  of  their  owners' 
lives  that  it  is  with  the  sense  of  looking  at  pieces  and 
bits  of  one's  dead  self  that  one  revisits  them.  If  one 
takes  the  fragments  out  to  fit  them  to  new  circum 
stance,  one  finds  them  not  only  uncomformable  and 
incapable,  but  so  volubly  confidential  of  the  associa 
tions  in  which  they  are  steeped,  that  one  wishes  to 
hurry  them  back  to  their  cell  and  lock  it  upon  them 
forever.  One  feels  then  that  the  old  way  was  far  better, 
and  that  if  the  things  had  been  auctioned  off,  and 
scattered  up  and  down,  as  chance  willed,  to  serve  new 
uses  with  people  who  wanted  them  enough  to  pay  for 
them  even  a  tithe  of  their  cost,  it  would  have  been  wiser. 
Failing  this,  a  fire  seems  the  only  thing  for  them,  and 
their  removal  to  the  cheaper  custody  of  a  combustible  or 
slow-burning  warehouse  the  best  recourse.  Desperate 
people,  aging  husbands  and  wives,  who  have  attempted 
the  reconstruction  of  their  homes  with  these 

''Portions  and  parcels  of  the  dreadful  past" 

have  been  known  to  wish  for  an  earthquake,  even, 
that  would  involve  their  belongings  in  an  indiscrimi 
nate  ruin. 

II 

In  fact,  each  new  start  in  life  should  be  made  with 
material  new  to  you,  if  comfort  is  to  attend  the  enter- 

300 


STORAGE 

prise.  It  is  not  only  sorrowful  but  it  is  futile  to  store 
your  possessions,  if  you  hope  to  find  the  old  happiness 
in  taking  them  out  and  using  them  again.  It  is  not 
that  they  will  not  go  into  place,  after  a  fashion,  and 
perform  their  old  office,  but  that  the  pang  they  will 
inflict  through  the  suggestion  of  the  other  places  where 
they  served  their  purpose  in  other  years  will  be  only 
the  keener  for  the  perfection  with  which  they  do  it 
now.  If  they  cannot  be  sold,  and  if  no  fire  comes 
down  from  heaven  to  consume  them,  then  they  had 
better  be  stored  with  no  thought  of  ever  taking  them 
out  again. 

That  will  be  expensive,  or  it  will  be  inexpensive, 
according  to  the  sort  of  storage  they  are  put  into.  The 
inexperienced  in  such  matters  may  be  surprised,  and 
if  they  have  hearts  they  may  be  grieved,  to  learn 
that  the  fire-proof  storage  of  the  furniture  of  the  aver 
age  house  would  equal  the  rent  of  a  very  comfortable 
domicile  in  a  small  town,  or  a  farm  by  which  a  family's 
living  can  be  earned,  with  a  decent  dwelling  in  which 
it  can  be  sheltered.  Yet  the  space  required  is  not 
very  great;  three  fair -sized  rooms  will  hold  every 
thing;  and  there  is  sometimes  a  fierce  satisfaction 
in  seeing  how  closely  the  things  that  once  stood  largely 
about,  and  seemed  to  fill  ample  parlors  and  chambers, 
can  be  packed  away.  To  be  sure  they  are  not  in  their 
familiar  attitudes;  they  lie  on  their  sides  or  backs, 
or  stand  upon  their  heads;  between  the  legs  of  library 
or  dining  tables  are  stuffed  all  kinds  of  minor  movables, 
with  cushions,  pillows,  pictures,  cunningly  adjusted 
to  the  environment ;  and  mattresses  pad  the  walls,  or 
interpose  their  soft  bulk  between  pieces  of  furniture 
that  would  otherwise  rend  each  other.  Carpets  sewn 
in  cotton  against  moths,  and  rugs  in  long  rolls;  the 
piano  hovering  under  its  ample  frame  a  whole  brood 
of  helpless  little  guitars,  mandolins,  and  banjos,  and 

301 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

supporting  on  its  broad  back  a  bulk  of  lighter  cases 
to  the  fire-proof  ceiling  of  the  cell;  paintings  in  boxes 
indistinguishable  outwardly  from  their  companioning 
mirrors;  barrels  of  china  and  kitchen  utensils,  and 
all  the  what-not  of  householding  and  house- keeping 
contribute  to  the  repletion. 

There  is  a  science  observed  in  the  arrangement  of 
the  various  effects;  against  the  rear  wall  and  packed 
along  the  floor,  and  then  in  front  of  and  on  top  of  these, 
is  built  a  superstructure  of  the  things  that  may  be 
first  wanted,  in  case  of  removal,  or  oftenest  wanted 
in  some  exigency  of  the  homeless  life  of  the  owners, 
pending  removal.  The  lightest  and  slightest  articles 
float  loosely  about  the  door,  or  are  interwoven  in  a 
kind  of  fabric  just  within,  and  curtaining  the  pon 
derous  mass  behind.  The  effect  is  not  so  artistic  as 
the  mortuary  mosaics  which  the  Roman  Capuchins 
design  with  the  bones  of  their  dead  brethren  in  the 
crypt  of  their  church,  but  the  warehousemen  no  doubt 
have  their  just  pride  in  it,  and  feel  an  artistic  pang  in 
its  provisional  or  final  disturbance. 

It  had  better  never  be  disturbed,  for  it  is  disturbed 
only  in  some  futile  dream  of  returning  to  the  past; 
and  we  never  can  return  to  the  past  on  the  old  terms. 
It  is  well  in  all  things  to  accept  life  implicitly,  and 
when  an  end  has  come  to  treat  it  as  the  end,  and  not 
vainly  mock  it  as  a  suspense  of  function.  When 
the  poor  break  up  their  homes,  with  no  immediate 
hope  of  founding  others,  they  must  sell  their  belong 
ings  because  they  cannot  afford  to  pay  storage  on 
them.  The  rich  or  richer  store  their  household  effects, 
and  cheat  themselves  with  the  illusion  that  they  are 
going  some  time  to  rehabilitate  with  them  just  such 
a  home  as  they  have  dismantled.  But  the  illusion 
probably  deceives  nobody  so  little  as  those  who  cherish 
the  vain  hope.  As  long  as  they  cherish  it,  however 

302 


STORAGE 

— and  they  must  cherish  it  till  their  furniture  or  them 
selves  fall  to  dust — they  cannot  begin  life  anew,  as 
the  poor  do  who  have  kept  nothing  of  the  sort  to  link 
them  to  the  past.  This  is  one  of  the  disabilities  of 
the  prosperous,  who  will  probably  not  be  relieved  of 
it  till  some  means  of  storing  the  owner  as  well  as  the 
furniture  is  invented.  In  the  immense  range  of  modern 
ingenuity,  this  is  perhaps  not  impossible.  Why  not, 
while  we  are  still  in  life,  some  sweet  oblivious  antidote 
which  shall  drug  us  against  memory,  and  after  time 
shall  elapse  for  the  reconstruction  of  a  new  home  in 
place  of  the  old,  shall  repossess  us  of  ourselves  as  un 
changed  as  the  things  with  which  we  shall  again 
array  it?  Here  is  a  pretty  idea  for  some  dreamer  to 
spin  into  the  filmy  fabric  of  a  romance,  and  I  hand 
somely  make  a  present  of  it  to  the  first  comer.  If 
the  dreamer  is  of  the  right  quality  he  will  know  how 
to  make  the  reader  feel  that  with  the  universal  long 
ing  to  return  to  former  conditions  or  circumstances  it 
must  always  be  a  mistake  to  do  so,  and  he  will  subtly 
insinuate  the  disappointment  and  discomfort  of  the 
stored  personality  in  resuming  its  old  relations.  With 
that  just  mixture  of  the  comic  and  pathetic  which 
wTe  desire  in  romance,  he  will  teach  convincingly  that 
a  stored  personality  is  to  be  desired  only  if  it  is  per 
manently  stored,  with  the  implication  of  a  like  finality 
in  the  storage  of  its  belongings. 

Save  in  some  signal  exception,  a  thing  taken  out 
of  storage  cannot  be  established  in  its  former  function 
without  a  sense  of  its  comparative  inadequacy.  It 
stands  in  the  old  place,  it  serves  the  old  use,  and  yet 
a  new  thing  would  be  better;  it  would  even  in  some 
subtle  wise  be  more  appropriate,  if  I  may  indulge  so 
audacious  a  paradox;  for  the  time  is  new,  and  so  will 
be  all  the  subconscious  keeping  in  which  our  lives 
are  mainly  passed.  We  are  supposed  to  have  associa- 

303 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

tions  with  the  old  things  which  render  them  precious, 
but  do  not  the  associations  rather  render  them  painful? 
If  that  is  true  of  the  inanimate  things,  how  much  truer 
it  is  of  those  personalities  which  once  environed  and 
furnished  our  lives!  Take  the  article  of  old  friends, 
for  instance:  has  it  ever  happened  to  the  reader  to 
witness  the  encounter  of  old  friends  after  the  lapse  of 
years?  Such  a  meeting  is  conventionally  imagined 
to  be  full  of  tender  joy,  a  rapture  that  vents  itself  in 
manly  tears,  perhaps,  and  certainly  in  womanly  tears. 
But  really  is  it  any  such  emotion?  Honestly  is  not 
it  a  cruel  embarrassment,  which  all  the  hypocritical 
pretences  cannot  hide?  The  old  friends  smile  and 
laugh,  and  babble  incoherently  at  one  another,  but 
are  they  genuinely  glad?  Is  not  each  wishing  the 
other  at  that  end  of  the  earth  from  which  he  came? 
Have  they  any  use  for  each  other  such  as  people  of 
unbroken  associations  have? 

I  have  lately  been  privy  to  the  reunion  of  two  old 
comrades  who  are  bound  together  more  closely  than 
most  men  in  a  community  of  interests,  occupations, 
and  ideals.  During  a  long  separation  they  had  kept 
account  of  each  other's  opinions  as  well  as  experiences  ; 
they  had  exchanged  letters,  from  time  to  time,  in  which 
they  opened  their  minds  fully  to  each  other,  and  found 
themselves  constantly  in  accord.  When  they  met 
they  made  a  great  shouting,  and  each  pretended  that 
he  found  the  other  just  what  he  used  to  be.  They 
talked  a  long,  long  time,  fighting  the  invisible  enemy 
which  they  felt  between  them.  The  enemy  was  habit, 
the  habit  of  other  minds  and  hearts,  the  daily  use  of 
persons  and  things  which  in  their  separation  they  had 
not  had  in  common.  When  the  old  friends  parted 
they  promised  to  meet  every  day,  and  now,  since  their 
lines  had  been  cast  in  the  same  places  again,  to  repair 
the  ravage  of  the  envious  years,  and  become  again 

304 


STORAGE 

to  each  other  all  that  they  had  ever  been.  But  though 
they  live  in  the  same  town,  and  often  dine  at  the  same 
table,  and  belong  to  the  same  club,  yet  they  have  not 
grown  together  again.  They  have  grown  more  and 
more  apart,  and  are  uneasy  in  each  other's  presence, 
tacitly  self-reproachful  for  the  same  effect  which  neither 
of  them  could  avert  or  repair.  They  had  been  re 
spectively  in  storage,  and  each,  in  taking  the  other 
out,  has  experienced  in  him  the  unfitness  which  grows 
upon  the  things  put  away  for  a  time  and  reinstated 
in  a  former  function. 

Ill 

I  have  not  touched  upon  these  facts  of  life,  without 
the  purpose  of  finding  some  way  out  of  the  coil.  There 
seems  none  better  than  the  counsel  of  keeping  one's 
face  set  well  forward,  and  one's  eyes  fixed  steadfastly 
upon  the  future.  This  is  the  hint  we  will  get  from 
nature  if  we  will  heed  her,  and  note  how  she  never 
recurs,  never  stores  or  takes  out  of  storage.  Fancy 
rehabilitating  one's  first  love :  how  nature  would  mock 
at  that!  We  cannot  go  back  and  be  the  men  and 
women  we  were,  any  more  than  we  can  go  back  and 
be  children.  As  we  grow  older,  each  year's  change 
in  us  is  more  chasmal  and  complete.  There  is  no 
elixir  whose  magic  will  recover  us  to  ourselves  as  we 
were  last  year;  but  perhaps  we  shall  return  to  our 
selves  more  and  more  in  the  times,  or  the  eternity, 
to  come.  Some  instinct  or  inspiration  implies  the 
promise  of  this,  but  only  on  condition  that  we  shall 
not  cling  to  the  life  that  has  been  ours,  and  hoard  its 
mummified  image  in  our  hearts.  We  must  not  seek 
to  store  ourselves,  but  must  part  with  what  we  were 
for  the  use  and  behoof  of  others,  as  the  poor  part  with 
their  worldly  gear  when  they  move  from  one  place  to 

305 


V 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE 

another.  It  is  a  curious  and  significant  property  of 
our  outworn  characteristics  that,  like  our  old  furniture, 
they  will  serve  admirably  in  the  life  of  some  other, 
and  that  this  other  can  profitably  make  them  his  when 
we  can  no  longer  keep  them  ours,  or  ever  hope  to  re 
sume  them.  They  not  only  go  down  to  successive 
generations,  but  they  spread  beyond  our  lineages, 
and  serve  the  turn  of  those  whom  we  never  knew  to  be 
within  the  circle  of  our  influence. 

Civilization  imparts  itself  by  some  such  means,  and 
the  lower  classes  are  clothed  in  the  cast  conduct  of  the 
upper,  which  if  it  had  been  stored  would  have  left  the 
inferiors  rude  and  barbarous.  We  have  only  to  think 
how  socially  naked  most  of  us  would  be  if  we  had  not 
had  the  beautiful  manners  of  our  exclusive  society  to 
put  on  at  each  change  of  fashion  when  it  dropped  them. 

All  earthly  and  material  things  should  be  worn 
out  with  use,  and  not  preserved  against  decay  by  any 
unnatural  artifice.  Even  when  broken  and  disabled 
from  overuse  they  have  a  kind  of  respectability  which 
must  commend  itself  to  the  observer,  and  which  par 
takes  of  the  pensive  grace  of  ruin.  An  old  table  with 
one  leg  gone,  and  slowly  lapsing  to  decay  in  the  wood 
shed,  is  the  emblem  of  a  fitter  order  than  the  same 
table,  with  all  its  legs  intact,  stored  with  the  rest  of 
the  furniture  from  a  broken  home.  Spinning-wheels 
gathering  dust  in  the  garret  of  a  house  that  is  itself 
falling  to  pieces  have  a  dignity  that  deserts  them  when 
they  are  dragged  from  their  refuge,  and  furbished 
up  with  ribbons  and  a  tuft  of  fresh  tow,  and  made 
to  serve  the  hollow  occasions  of  bric-a-brac,  as  they 
were  a  few  years  ago.  A  pitcher  broken  at  the  foun 
tain,  or  a  battered  kettle  on  a  rubbish  heap,  is  a  vener 
able  object,  but  not  crockery  and  copper-ware  stored 
in  the  possibility  of  future  need.  However  carefully 
handed  down  from  one  generation  to  another,  the 

306 


STORAGE 

old  objects  have  a  forlorn  incongruity  in  their  suc 
cessive  surroundings  which  appeals  to  the  compassion 
rather  than  the  veneration  of  the  witness. 

It  was  from  a  truth  deeply  mystical  that  Hawthorne 
declared  against  any  sort  of  permanence  in  the  dwell 
ings  of  men,  and  held  that  each  generation  should 
newly  house  itself.  He  preferred  the  perishability 
of  the  wooden  American  house  to  the  durability  of 
the  piles  of  brick  or  stone  which  in  Europe  affected 
him  as  with  some  moral  miasm  from  the  succession 
of  sires  and  sons  and  grandsons  that  had  died  out  of 
them.  But  even  of  such  structures  as  these  it  is  im 
pressive  how  little  the  earth  makes  with  the  passage 
of  time.  Where  once  a  great  city  of  them  stood,  you 
shall  find  a  few  tottering  walls,  scarcely  more  mindful 
of  the  past  than  "  the  cellar  and  the  well"  which  Holmes 
marked  as  the  ultimate  monuments,  the  last  witnesses, 
to  the  existence  of  our  more  transitory  habitations. 
It  is  the  law  of  the  patient  sun  that  everything  under 
it  shall  decay,  and  if  by  reason  of  some  swift  calamity, 
some  fiery  cataclysm,  the  perishable  shall  be  over 
taken  by  a  fate  that  fixes  it  in  unwasting  arrest,  it 
cannot  be  felt  that  the  law  has  been  set  aside  in  the 
interest  of  men's  happiness  or  cheerfulness.  Neither 
Pompeii  nor  Herculaneum  invites  the  gayety  of  the  spec 
tator,  who  as  he  walks  their  disinterred  thoroughfares 
has  the  weird  sense  of  taking  a  former  civilization  out 
of  storage,  and  the  ache  of  finding  it  wholly  unadapted 
to  the  actual  world.  As  far  as  his  comfort  is  concerned, 
it  had  been  far  better  that  those  cities  had  not  been 
vstored,  but  had  fallen  to  the  ruin  that  has  overtaken  all 
their  contemporaries. 

IV 

No,  good  friend,  sir  or  madam,  as  the  case  may  be, 
but  most  likely  madam:   if  you  are  about  to  break 

307 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

up  your  household  for  any  indefinite  period,  and  are 
not  so  poor  that  you  need  sell  your  things,  be  warned 
against  putting  them  in  storage,  unless  of  the  most 
briskly  combustible  type.  Better,  far  better,  give 
them  away,  and  disperse  them  by  that  means  to  a 
continuous  use  that  shall  end  in  using  them  up;  or 
if  no  one  will  take  them,  then  hire  a  vacant  lot,  some 
where,  and  devote  them  to  the  flames.  By  that  means 
you  shall  bear  witness  against  a  custom  that  insults 
the  order  of  nature,  and  crowds  the  cities  with  the 
cemeteries  of  dead  homes,  where  there  is  scarcely  space 
for  the  living  homes.  Do  not  vainly  fancy  that  you 
shall  take  your  stuff  out  of  storage  and  find  it  adapted 
to  the  ends  that  it  served  before  it  was  put  in.  You 
will  not  be  the  same,  or  have  the  same  needs  or  desires, 
when  you  take  it  out,  and  the  new  place  which  you 
shall  hope  to  equip  with  it  will  receive  it  with  cold  reluc 
tance,  or  openly  refuse  it,  insisting  upon  forms  and  di 
mensions  that  render  it  ridiculous  or  impossible.  The 
law  is  that  nothing  taken  out  of  storage  is  the  same  as  it 
was  when  put  in,  and  this  law,  hieroglyphed  in  those  rude 
graffiti  apparently  inscribed  by  accident  in  the  process 
of  removal,  has  only  such  exceptions  as  prove  the  rule. 
The  world  to  which  it  has  returned  is  not  the  same, 
and  that  makes  all  the  difference.  Yet,  truth  and  beau 
ty  do  not  change,  however  the  moods  and  fashions 
change.  The  ideals  remain,  and  these  alone  you  can 
go  back  to,  secure  of  finding  them  the  same,  to-day  and 
to-morrow,  that  they  were  yesterday.  This  perhaps  is 
because  they  have  never  been  in  storage,  but  in  con 
stant  use,  while  the  moods  and  fashions  have  been  put 
away  and  taken  out  a  thousand  tiires.  Most  people 
have  never  had  ideals,  but  only  moods  and  fashions, 
but  such  people,  least  of  all,  are  fitted  to  find  in  them 
that  pleasure  of  the  rococo  which  consoles  the  idealist 
when  the  old  moods  and  fashions  reappear. 

308 


"  FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

THERE  was  not  much  promise  of  pleasure  in  the 
sodden  afternoon  of  a  mid -March  day  at  Pitts- 
burg,  where  the  smoke  of  a  thousand  foundry  chim 
neys  gave  up  trying  to  rise  through  the  thick,  soft 
air,  and  fell  with  the  constant  rain  which  it  dyed  its 
own  black.  But  early  memories  stirred  joyfully  in  the 
two  travellers  in  whose  consciousness  I  was  making 
my  tour,  at  sight  of  the  familiar  stern-wheel  steam 
boat  lying  beside  the  wharf -boat  at  the  foot  of  the 
dilapidated  levee,  and  doing  its  best  to  represent 
the  hundreds  of  steamboats  that  used  to  lie  there  in 
the  old  days,  It  had  the  help  of  three  others  in  its 
generous  effort,  and  the  levee  itself  made  a  gallant 
pretence  of  being  crowded  with  freight,  and  succeeded 
in  displaying  several  saturated  piles  of  barrels  and 
agricultural  implements  on  the  irregular  pavement 
whose  wheel-worn  stones,  in  long  stretches,  were  sunk 
en  out  of  sight  in  their  parent  mud.  The  boats  and 
the  levee  were  jointly  quite  equal  to  the  demand  made 
upon  them  by  the  light-hearted  youngsters  of  sixty- 
five  and  seventy,  who  were  setting  out  on  their  journey 
in  fulfilment  of  a  long-cherished  dream,  and  for  whom 
much  less  freight  and  much  fewer  boats  would  have  re 
habilitated  the  past. 

I 

When   they    mounted    the    broad    stairway,    tidily 
strewn  with  straw  to  save  it  from  the  mud  of  careless 

309 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

boots,  and  entered  the  long  saloon  of  the  steamboat, 
the  promise  of  their  fancy  was  more  than  made  good 
for  them.  From  the  clerk's  office,  where  they  eagerly 
paid  their  fare,  the  saloon  stretched  two  hundred  feet 
by  thirty  away  to  the  stern,  a  cavernous  splendor  of 
white  paint  and  gilding,  starred  with  electric  bulbs, 
and  fenced  at  the  stern  with  wide  windows  of  painted 
glass.  Midway  between  the  great  stove  in  the  bow 
where  the  men  were  herded,  and  the  great  stove  at  the 
stern  where  the  women  kept  themselves  in  the  seclu 
sion  which  the  tradition  of  Western  river  travel  still 
guards,  after  wellnigh  a  hundred  years,  they  were 
given  ample  state-rooms,  whose  appointments  so  ex 
actly  duplicated  those  they  remembered  from  far-off 
days  that  they  could  have  believed  themselves  awak 
ened  from  a  dream  of  insubstantial  time,  with  the 
events  in  which  it  had  seemed  to  lapse,  mere  feints  of 
experience.  When  they  sat  down  at  the  supper-table 
and  were  served  with  the  sort  of  belated  steamboat 
dinner  which  it  recalled  as  vividly,  the  kind,  sooty 
faces  and  snowy  aprons  of  those  who  served  them 
were  so  quite  those  of  other  days  that  they  decided 
all  repasts  since  were  mere  Barmecide  feasts,  and 
made  up  for  the  long  fraud  practised  upon  them  with 
the  appetites  of  the  year  1850. 


II 

A  rigider  sincerity  than  shall  be  practised  here  might 
own  that  the  table  of  the  good  steamboat  Avonek  left 
something  to  be  desired,  if  tested  by  more  sophisti 
cated  cuisines,  but  in  the  article  of  corn-bread  it  was 
of  an  inapproachable  pre-eminence.  This  bread  was 
made  of  the  white  corn  which  North  knows  not,  nor 
the  hapless  East;  and  the  buckwheat  cakes  at  break- 

310 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

fast  were  without  blame,  and  there  was  a  simple  va 
riety  in  the  abundance  which  ought  to  have  satisfied 
if  it  did  not  flatter  the  choice.  The  only  thing  that 
seemed  strangely,  that  seemed  sadly,  anomalous  in 
a  land  flowing  with  ham  and  bacon  was  that  the  Avo- 
nek  had  not  imagined  providing  either  for  the  guests, 
no  one  of  whom  could  have  had  a  religious  scruple 
against  them. 

The  thing,  indeed,  which  was  first  and  last  con 
spicuous  in  the  passengers,  was  their  perfectly  Amer 
ican  race  and  character.  At  the  start,  when  with  an 
acceptable  observance  of  Western  steamboat  tradition 
the  Avonek  left  her  wharf  eight  hours  behind  her  ap 
pointed  time,  there  were  very  few  passengers;  but 
they  began  to  come  aboard  at  the  little  towns  of  both 
shores  as  she  swam  southward  and  westward,  till  all 
the  tables  were  so  full  that,  in  observance  of  another 
Western  steamboat  tradition,  one  did  well  to  stand 
guard  over  his  chair  lest  some  other  who  liked  it  should 
seize  it  earlier.  The  passengers  were  of  every  age 
and  condition,  except  perhaps  the  highest  condition, 
and  they  seemed  none  the  worse  for  being  more  like 
Americans  of  the  middle  of  the  last  century  than  of 
the  beginning  of  this.  Their  fashions  were  of  an  ap 
proximation  to  those  of  the  present,  but  did  not  scru 
pulously  study  detail;  their  manners  were  those  of 
simpler  if  riot  sincerer  days. 

The  women  kept  to  themselves  at  their  end  of  the 
saloon,  aloof  from  the  study  of  any  but  their  husbands 
or  kindred,  but  the  men  were  everywhere  else  about, 
and  open  to  observation.  They  were  not  so  open  to 
conversation,  for  your  mid- Westerner  is  not  a  facile, 
though  not  an  unwilling,  talker.  They  sat  by  their 
tall,  cast-iron  stove  (of  the  oval  pattern  unvaried  since 
the  earliest  stove  of  the  region),  and  silently  rumi 
nated  their  tobacco  and  spat  into  the  clustering  cus- 


LITERATURE  AND    LIFE 

pidors  at  their  feet.  They  would  always  answer  civ 
illy  if  questioned,  and  oftenest  intelligently,  but  they 
asked  nothing  in  return,  and  they  seemed  to  have 
none  of  that  curiosity  once  known  or  imagined  in  them 
by  Dickens  and  other  averse  aliens.  They  had  most 
ly  faces  of  resolute  power,  and  such  a  looking  of  know 
ing  exactly  what  they  wanted  as  would  not  have  prom 
ised  well  for  any  collectively  or  individually  opposing 
them.  If  ever  the  sense  of  human  equality  has  ex 
pressed  itself  in  the  human  countenance  it  speaks  un 
mistakably  from  American  faces  like  theirs. 

They  were  neither  handsome  nor  unhandsome;  but 
for  a  few  striking  exceptions,  they  had  been  impar 
tially  treated  by  nature;  and  where  they  were  nota 
bly  plain  their  look  of  force  made  up  for  their  lack 
of  beauty.  They  were  notably  handsomest  in  a  tall 
young  fellow  of  a  lean  face,  absolute  Greek  in  pro 
file,  amply  thwarted  with  a  branching  mustache,  and 
slender  of  figure,  on  whom  his  clothes,  lustrous  from 
much  sitting  down  and  leaning  up,  grew  like  the  bark 
on  a  tree,  and  who  moved  slowly  and  gently  about, 
and  spoke  with  a  low,  kind  voice.  In  his  young  come 
liness  he  was  like  a  god,  as  the  gods  wrere  fancied  in 
the  elder  world :  a  chewing  and  a  spitting  god,  indeed, 
but  divine  in  his  passionless  calm. 

He  was  a  serious  divinity,  and  so  were  all  the  mid- 
Western  human -beings  about  him.  One  heard  no 
joking  either  of  the  dapper  or  cockney  sort  of  cities,  or 
the  quaint  graphic  phrasing  of  Eastern  country  folk; 
and  it  may  have  been  not  far  enough  West  for  the  true 
Western  humor.  At  any  rate,  when  they  were  not 
silent  these  men  still  were  serious. 

The  women  were  apparently  serious,  too,  and  where 
they  were  associated  with  the  men  were,  if  they  were 
not  really  subject,  strictly  abeyant,  in  the  spectator's 
eye.  The  average  of  them  was  certainly  not  above 

312 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

the  American  woman's  average  in  good  looks,  though 
one  young  mother  of  six  children,  well  grown  save 
for  the  baby  in  her  arms,  was  of  the  type  some  mas 
ters  loved  to  paint,  with  eyes  set  wide  under  low-arched 
brows.  She  had  the  placid  dignity  and  the  air  of 
motherly  goodness  which  goes  fitly  with  such  beauty, 
and  the  sight  of  her  was  such  as  to  disperse  many  of 
the  misgivings  that  beset  the  beholder  who  looketh 
upon  the  woman  when  she  is  New.  As  she  seemed, 
so  any  man  might  wish  to  remember  his  mother  seem 
ing. 

All  these  river  folk,  who  came  from  the  farms  and 
villages  along  the  stream,  and  never  from  the  great 
towns  or  cities,  were  well  mannered,  if  quiet  manners 
are  good;  and  though  the  men  nearly  all  chewed  to 
bacco  and  spat  between  meals,  at  the  table  they  were 
of  an  exemplary  behavior.  The  use  of  the  fork  ap 
peared  strange  to  them,  and  they  handled  it  strenu 
ously  rather  than  agilely,  yet  they  never  used  their 
knives  .shovel wise,  however  they  planted  their  forks 
like  daggers  in  the  steak:  the  steak  deserved  no  gen 
tler  usage,  indeed.  They  were  usually  young,  and 
they  were  constantly  changing,  bent  upon  short  jour 
neys  between  the  shore  villages;  they  were  mostly 
farm  youth,  apparently,  though  some  were  said  to  be 
going  to  find  work  at  the  great  potteries  up  the  river 
for  wages  fabulous  to  home-keeping  experience. 

One  personality  which  greatly  took  the  liking  of 
one  of  our  tourists  was  a  Kentucky  mountaineer  who, 
after  three  years'  exile  in  a  West  Virginia  oil  town, 
was  gladly  returning  to  the  home  for  which  he  and  all 
his  brood — of  large  and  little  comely,  red-haired  boys 
and  girls — had  never  ceased  to  pine.  His  eagerness 
to  get  back  was  more  than  touching;  it  was  awing; 
for  it  was  founded  on  a  sort  of  mediaeval  patriotism 
that  could  own  no  excellence  beyond  the  borders  of 

313 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

the  natal  region.  He  had  prospered  at  high  wages 
in  his  trade  at  that  oil  town,  and  his  wife  and  children 
had  managed  a  hired  farm  so  well  as  to  pay  all  the 
family  expenses  from  it,  but  he  was  gladly  leaving 
opportunity  behind,  that  he  might  return  to  a  land 
where,  if  you  were  passing  a  house  at  meal-time,  they 
came  out  and  made  you  come  in  and  eat.  "When 
you  eat  where  I've  been  living  you  pay  fifty  cents/' 
he  explained.  "And  are  you  taking  all  your  house 
hold  stuff  with  you?"  "Only  the  cook-stove.  Well, 
Til  tell  you :  we  made  the  other  things  ourselves;  made 
them  out  of  plank,  and  they  were  not  worth  moving." 
Here  was  the  backwoods  surviving  into  the  day  of 
Trusts;  and  yet  we  talk  of  a  world  drifted  hopelessly 
far  from  the  old  ideals! 


Ill 

The  new  ideals,  the  ideals  of  a  pitiless  industrial 
ism,  were  sufficiently  expressed  along  the  busy  shores, 
where  the  innumerable  derricks  of  oil-wells  silhouetted 
their  gibbet  shapes  against  the  horizon,  and  the  myr 
iad  chimneys  of  the  foundries  sent  up  the  smoke  of 
their  torment  into  the  quiet  skies  and  flamed  upon  the 
forehead  of  the  evening  like  baleful  suns.  But  why 
should  I  be  so  violent  of  phrase  against  these  guilt 
less  means  of  millionairing  ?  There  must  be  iron  and 
coal  as  well  as  wheat  and  corn  in  the  world,  and  with 
out  their  combination  we  cannot  have  bread.  If  the 
combination  is  in  the  form  of  a  trust,  such  as  has  laid 
its  giant  clutch  upon  all  those  warring  industries  be 
side  the  Ohio  and  swept  them  into  one  great  monop 
oly,  why,  it  has  still  to  show  that  it  is  worse  than  com 
petition;  that  it  is  not,  indeed,  merely  the  first  blind 
stirrings  of  the  universal  co-operation  of  which  the 

314 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

dreamers  of  ideal  commonwealths  have  always  had 
the  vision. 

The  derricks  and  the  chimneys,  when  one  saw  them, 
seemed  to  have  all  the  land  to  themselves ;  but  this  was 
an  appearance  only,  terrifying  in  its  strenuousness, 
but  not,  after  all,  the  prevalent  aspect.  That  was  rather 
of  farms,  farms,  and  evermore  farms,  lying  along  the 
rich  levels  of  the  stream,  and  climbing  as  far  up  its 
beautiful  hills  as  the  plough  could  drive.  In  the  spring 
and  in  the  fall,  when  it  is  suddenly  swollen  by  the  ear 
lier  and  the  later  rains,  the  river  scales  its  banks  and 
swims  over  those  levels  to  the  feet  of  those  hills,  and 
when  it  recedes  it  leaves  the  cornfields  enriched  for 
the  crop  that  has  never  failed  since  the  forests  were 
first  cut  from  the  land.  Other  fertilizing  the  fields 
have  never  had  any,  but  they  teem  as  if  the  guano 
islands  had  been  emptied  into  their  laps.  They  feel 
themselves  so  rich  that  they  part  with  great  lengths 
and  breadths  of  their  soil  to  the  river,  which  is  not 
good  for  the  river,  and  is  not  well  for  the  fields;  so 
that  the  farmers,  whose  ease  learns  slowly,  are  be 
ginning  more  and  more  to  fence  their  borders  with  the 
young  willows  which  form  a  hedge  in  the  shallow  wash 
such  a  great  part  of  the  way  up  and  down  the  Ohio. 
Elms  and  maples  wade  in  among  the  willows,  and  in 
time  the  river  will  be  denied  the  indigestion  which  it 
confesses  in  shoals  and  bars  at  low  water,  and  in  a 
difficulty  of  channel  at  all  stages. 

Meanwhile  the  fields  flourish  in  spite  of  their  unwise 
largesse  to  the  stream,  whose  shores  the  comfortable 
farmsteads  keep  so  constantly  that  they  are  never  out 
of  sight.  Most  commonly  they  are  of  brick,  but  some 
times  of  painted  wood,  and  they  are  set  on  little  emi 
nences  high  enough  to  save  them  from  the  freshets, 
but  always  so  near  the  river  that  they  cannot  fail  of 
its  passing  life.  Usually  a  group  of  planted  ever- 

315 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

greens  half  hides  the  house  from  the  boat,  but  its  in 
mates  will  not  lose  any  detail  of  the  show,  and  come 
down  to  the  gate  of  the  paling  fence  to  watch  the  Avo- 
nek  float  by:  motionless  men  and  women,  who  lean 
upon  the  supporting  barrier,  and  rapt  children  who 
hold  by  their  skirts  and  hands.  There  is  not  the  eager 
New  England  neatness  about  these  homes;  now  and 
then  they  have  rather  a  sloven  air,  which  does  not 
discord  with  their  air  of  comfort;  and  very,  very  rare 
ly  they  stagger  drunkenly  in  a  ruinous  neglect.  Ex 
cept  where  a  log  cabin  has  hardily  survived  the  pio 
neer  period,  the  houses  are  nearly  all  of  one  pattern; 
their  facades  front  the  river,  and  low  chimneys  point 
either  gable,  where  a  half-story  forms  the  attic  of  the 
two  stories  below.  Gardens  of  pot-herbs  flank  them, 
and  behind  cluster  the  corn-cribs,  and  the  barns  and 
stables  stretch  into  the  fields  that  stretch  out  to  the 
hills,  now  scantily  wooded,  but  ever  lovely  in  the  lines 
that  change  with  the  steamer's  course. 

Except  in  the  immediate  suburbs  of  the  large  towns, 
there  is  no  ambition  beyond  that  of  rustic  comfort  in 
the  buildings  on  the  shore.  There  is  no  such  thing, 
apparently,  as  a  summer  cottage,  with  its  mock  hu 
mility  of  name,  up  or  down  the  whole  tortuous  length 
of  the  Ohio.  As  yet  the  land  is  not  openly  depraved 
by  shows  of  wealth;  those  who  amass  it  either  keep 
it  to  themselves  or  come  away  to  spend  it  in  Euro 
pean  travel,  or  pause  to  waste  it  unrecognized  on  the 
ungrateful  Atlantic  seaboard.  The  only  distinctions 
that  are  marked  are  between  the  homes  of  honest  in 
dustry  above  the  banks  and  the  homes  below  them  of 
the  leisure,  which  it  is  hoped  is  not  dishonest.  But, 
honest  or  dishonest,  it  is  there  apparently  to  stay  in 
the  house-boats  which  line  the  shores  by  thousands, 
and  repeat  on  Occidental  terms  in  our  new  land  the 
river-life  of  old  and  far  Cathay. 

316 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

They  formed  the  only  feature  of  their  travel  which 
our  tourists  found  absolutely  novel ;  they  could  clearly 
or  dimly  recall  from  the  past  every  other  feature  but 
the  house-boats,  which  they  instantly  and  gladly  nat 
uralized  to  their  memories  of  it.  The  houses  had  in 
common  the  form  of  a  freight-car  set  in  a  flat-bottomed 
boat ;  the  car  would  be  shorter  or  longer,  with  one,  or 
two,  or  three  windows  in  its  sides,  and  a  section  of 
stovepipe  softly  smoking  from  its  roof.  The  windows 
might  be  curtained  or  they  might  be  bare,  but  appar 
ently  there  was  no  other  distinction  among  the  house 
boat  dwellers,  whose  sluggish  craft  lay  moored  among 
the  willows,  or  tied  to  an  elm  or  a  maple,  or  even  made 
fast  to  a  stake  on  shore.  There  were  cases  in  which 
they  had  not  followed  the  fall  of  the  river  promptly 
enough,  and  lay  slanted  on  the  beach,  or  propped  up 
to  a  more  habitable  level  on  its  slope ;  in  a  sole,  sad  in 
stance,  the  house  had  gone  down  with  the  boat  and 
lay  wallowing  in  the  wash  of  the  flood.  But  they  all 
gave  evidence  of  a  tranquil  and  unhurried  life  which 
the  soul  of  the  beholder  envied  within  him,  whether 
it  manifested  itself  in  the  lord  of  the  house-boat  fish 
ing  from  its  bow,  or  the  lady  coming  to  cleanse  some 
household  utensil  at  its  stern.  Infrequently  a  group 
of  the  house-boat  dwellers  seemed  to  be  drawing  a  net, 
and  in  one  high  event  they  exhibited  a  good-sized  fish 
of  their  capture,  but  nothing  so  strenuous  character 
ized  their  attitude  on  any  other  occasion.  The  accept 
ed  theory  of  them  was  that  they  did  by  day  as  nearly 
nothing  as  men  could  do  and  live,  and  that  by  night 
their  forays  on  the  bordering  farms  supplied  the  sim 
ple  needs  of  people  who  desired  neither  to  toil  nor  to 
spin,  but  only  to  emulate  Solomon  in  his  glory  with 
the  least  possible  exertion.  The  joyful  witness  of  their 
ease  would  willingly  have  sacrificed  to  them  any 
amount  of  the  facile  industrial  or  agricultural  pros- 

317 


LITERATURE   AND    LIFE 

perity  about  them  and  left  them  slumberously  afloat, 
unmolested  by  dreams  of  landlord  or  tax-gatherer. 
Their  existence  for  the  fleeting  time  seemed  the  true 
interpretation  of  the  sage's  philosophy,  the  fulfilment 
of  the  poet's  aspiration. 

"  Why  should  we  only  toil,  that  are  the  roof  and  crown  of 
things  ?" 

How  did  they  pass  their  illimitable  leisure,  when 
they  rested  from  the  fishing-net  by  day  and  the  chicken- 
coop  by  night?  Did  they  read  the  new  historical  fic 
tions  aloud  to  one  another?  Did  some  of  them  even 
meditate  the  thankless  muse  and  not  mind  her  ingrat 
itude?  Perhaps  the  ladies  of  the  house-boats,  when  they 
found  themselves — as  they  often  did — in  companies  of 
four  or  five,  had  each  other  in  to  "  evenings/'  at  which 
one  of  them  read  a  paper  on  some  artistic  or  literary 
topic. 

IV 

The  trader's  boat,  of  an  elder  and  more  authentic 
tradition,  sometimes  shouldered  the  house-boats  away 
from  a  village  landing,  but  it,  too,  was  a  peaceful  home, 
where  the  family  life  visibly  went  hand-in-hand  with 
commerce.  When  the  trader  has  supplied  all  the  wants 
and  wishes  of  a  neighborhood,  he  unmoors  his  craft 
and  drops  down  the  river's  tide  to  where  it  meets  the 
ocean's  tide  in  the  farthermost  Mississippi,  and  there 
either  sells  out  both  his  boat  and  his  stock,  or  hitches 
his  home  to  some  returning  steamboat,  and  climbs 
slowly,  with  many  pauses,  back  to  the  upper  Ohio. 
But  his  home  is  not  so  interesting  as  that  of  the  house- 
boatman,  nor  so  picturesque  as  that  of  the  raftsman, 
whose  floor  of  logs  rocks  flexibly  under  his  shanty, 
but  securely  rides  the  current.  As  the  pilots  said,  a 

318 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

steamboat  never  tries  to  hurt  a  raft  of  logs,  which  is 
adapted  to  dangerous  retaliation;  and  by  night  it  al 
ways  gives  a  wide  berth  to  the  lantern  tilting  above 
the  raft  from  a  swaying  pole.  By  day  the  raft  forms 
one  of  the  pleasantest  aspects  of  the  river-life,  with  its 
convoy  of  skiffs  always  searching  the  stream  or  shore 
for  logs  which  have  broken  from  it,  and  which  the 
skiffmen  recognize  by  distinctive  brands  or  stamps. 
Here  and  there  the  logs  lie  in  long  ranks  upon  the 
shelving  beaches,  mixed  with  the  drift  of  trees  and 
fence -rails,  and  frames  of  corn -cribs  and  hen-coops, 
and  even  house  walls,  which  the  freshets  have  brought 
down  and  left  stranded.  The  tops  of  the  little  willows 
are  tufted  gayly  with  hay  and  rags,  and  other  spoil  of 
the  flood ;  and  in  one  place  a  disordered  mattress  was 
lodged  high  among  the  boughs  of  a  water-maple,  where 
it  would  form  building  material  for  countless  genera 
tions  of  birds.  The  fat  cornfields  were  often  littered 
with  a  varied  wreckage  which  the  farmers  must  soon 
heap  together  and  burn,  to  be  rid  of  it,  and  everywhere 
were  proofs  of  the  river's  power  to  devastate  as  well  as 
enrich  its  shores.  The  dwellers  there  had  no  power 
against  it,  in  its  moments  of  insensate  rage,  and  the 
land  no  protection  from  its  encroachments  except  in 
the  simple  device  of  the  willow  hedges,  which,  if  plant 
ed,  sometimes  refused  to  grow,  but  often  came  of  them 
selves  and  kept  the  torrent  from  the  loose,  unfathom 
able  soil  of  the  banks,  otherwise  crumbling  helplessly 
into  it. 

The  rafts  were  very  well,  and  the  house-boats  and 
the  traders7  boats,  but  the  most  majestic  feature  of  the 
river-life  was  the  tow  of  coal-barges  wThich,  going  or 
coming,  the  Avonek  met  every  few  miles.  Whether 
going  or  coming  they  were  pushed,  not  pulled,  by  the 
powerful  steamer  which  gathered  them  in  tens  and 
twenties  before  her,  and  rode  the  mid -current  with 

319 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

them,  when  they  were  full,  or  kept  the  slower  water 
near  shore  when  they  were  empty.  They  claimed 
the  river  where  they  passed,  and  the  Avonek  bowed  to 
an  unwritten  law  in  giving  them  the  full  right  of  way, 
from  the  time  when  their  low  bulk  first  rose  in  sight, 
with  the  chimneys  of  their  steamer  towering  above 
them  and  her  gay  contours  gradually  making  them 
selves  seen,  till  she  receded  from  the  encounter,  with 
the  wheel  at  her  stern  pouring  a  cataract  of  yellow 
water  from  its  blades.  It  was  insurpassably  pict 
uresque  always,  and  not  the  tapering  masts  or  the 
swelling  sails  of  any  sea-going  craft  could  match  it. 


So  at  least  the  travellers  thought  who  were  here  re 
visiting  the  earliest  scenes  of  childhood,  and  who  per 
haps  found  them  unduly  endeared.  They  perused 
them  mostly  from  an  easy  seat  at  the  bow  of  the  hur 
ricane-deck,  and,  whenever  the  weather  favored  them, 
spent  the  idle  time  in  selecting  shelters  for  their  de 
clining  years  among  the  farmsteads  that  offered  them 
selves  to  their  choice  up  and  down  the  shores.  The 
weather  commonly  favored  them,  and  there  was  at 
least  one  whole  day  on  the  lower  river  when  the  weather 
was  divinely  flattering.  The  soft,  dull  air  lulled  their 
nerves  while  it  buffeted  their  faces,  and  the  sun,  that 
looked  through  veils  of  mist  and  smoke,  gently  warmed 
their  aging  frames  and  found  itself  again  in  their 
hearts.  Perhaps  it  was  there  that  the  water-elms  and 
water-maples  chiefly  budded,  and  the  red-birds  sang, 
and  the  drifting  flocks  of  blackbirds  called  and  clat 
tered;  but  surely  these  also  spread  their  gray  and 
pink  against  the  sky  and  filled  it  with  their  voices. 
There  were  meadow-larks  and  robins  without  as  well 

320 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O  " 

as  within,  and  it  was  no  subjective  plough  that  turned 
the  earliest  furrows  in  those  opulent  fields. 

When  they  were  tired  of  sitting  there,  they  climbed, 
invited  or  uninvited,  but  always  welcomed,  to  the  pilot 
house,  where  either  pilot  of  the  two  who  were  always 
on  watch  poured  out  in  an  unstinted  stream  the  lore  of 
the  river  on  which  all  their  days  had  been  passed.  They 
knew  from  indelible  association  every  ever-changing 
line  of  the  constant  hills;  every  dwelling  by  the  low 
banks ;  every  aspect  of  the  smoky  towns ;  every  caprice 
of  the  river;  every  tree,  every  stump;  probably  every 
bud  and  bird  in  the  sky.  They  talked  only  of  the 
river ;  they  cared  for  nothing  else.  The  Cuban  cumber 
and  the  Philippine  folly  were  equally  far  from  them; 
the  German  prince  was  not  only  as  if  he  had  never  been 
here,  but  as  if  he  never  had  been;  no  public  question 
concerned  them  but  that  of  abandoning  the  canals 
which  the  Ohio  legislature  was  then  foolishly  de 
bating.  Were  not  the  canals  water-ways,  too,  like 
the  river,  and  if  the  State  unnaturally  abandoned 
them  would  not  it  be  for  the  behoof  of  those  railroads 
which  the  rivermen  had  always  fought,  and  which 
would  have  made  a  solitude  of  the  river  if  they 
could? 

But  they  could  not,  and  there  was  nothing  more 
surprising  and  delightful  in  this  blissful  voyage  than 
the  evident  fact  that  the  old  river  traffic  had  strongly 
survived,  and  seemed  to  be  more  strongly  reviving. 
Perhaps  it  was  not;  perhaps  the  fondness  of  those 
Ohio-river-born  passengers  was  abused  by  an  illusion 
(as  subjective  as  that  of  the  buds  and  birds)  of  a  vivid 
variety  of  business  and  pleasure  on  the  beloved  stream. 
But  again,  perhaps  not.  They  were  seldom  out  of 
sight  of  the  substantial  proofs  of  both  in  the  through 
or  way  packets  they  encountered,  or  the  nondescript 
steam  craft  that  swarmed  about  the  mouths  of  the  con- 
»«  321 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE 

tributary  rivers,  and  climbed  their  shallowing  courses 
into  the  recesses  of  their  remotest  hills,  to  the  last  lurk 
ing-places  of  their  oil  and  coal. 


VI 

The  Avonek  was  always  stopping  to  put  off  or  take 
on  merchandise  or  men.  She  would  stop  for  a  single 
passenger,  planted  in  the  mud  with  his  telescope  valise 
or  gripsack  under  the  edge  of  a  lonely  cornfield,  or  to 
gather  upon  her  decks  the  few  or  many  casks  or  bales 
that  a  farmer  wished  to  ship.  She  lay  long  hours  by 
the  wharf-boats  of  busy  towns,  exchanging  one  cargo 
for  another,  in  that  anarchic  fetching  and  carrying 
which  we  call  commerce,  and  which  we  drolly  suppose 
to  be  governed  by  laws.  But  wherever  she  paused  or 
parted,  she  tested  the  pilot's  marvellous  skill,  for  no 
landing,  no  matter  how  often  she  landed  in  the  same 
place,  could  be  twice  the  same.  At  each  return  the 
varying  stream  and  shore  must  be  studied,  and  every 
caprice  of  either  divined.  It  was  always  a  triumph, 
a  miracle,  whether  by  day  or  by  night,  a  constant 
wonder  how  under  the  pilot's  inspired  touch  she  glided 
softly  to  her  moorings,  and  without  a  jar  slipped  from 
them  again  and  went  on  her  course. 

But  the  landings  by  night  were  of  course  the  finest. 
Then  the  wide  fan  of  the  search-light  was  unfurled 
upon  the  point  to  be  attained  and  the  heavy  staging 
lowered  from  the  bow  to  the  brink,  perhaps  crushing 
the  willow  hedges  in  its  fall,  and  scarcely  touching 
the  land  before  a  black,  ragged  deck-hand  had  run  out 
through  the  splendor  and  made  a  line  fast  to  the  trunk 
of  the  nearest  tree.  Then  the  work  of  lading  or  unlad 
ing  rapidly  began  in  the  witching  play  of  the  light, 
that  set  into  radiant  relief  the  black,  eager  faces  and 

322 


"FLOATING  DOWN  THE  RIVER  ON  THE  O-HI-O" 

the  black,  eager  figures  of  the  deck-hands  struggling 
up  or  down  the  staging  under  boxes  of  heavy  wares, 
or  kegs  of  nails,  or  bales  of  straw,  or  blocks  of  stone, 
steadily  mocked  or  cursed  at  in  their  shapeless  effort, 
till  the  last  of  them  reeled  back  to  the  deck  down  the 
steep  of  the  lifting  stage,  and  dropped  to  his  broken 
sleep  wherever  he  could  coil  himself,  doglike,  down 
among  the  heaps  of  freight. 

No  dog,  indeed,  leads  such  a  hapless  life  as  theirs; 
and  ah!  and  ah!  why  should  their  sable  shadows  in 
trude  in  a  picture  that  was  meant  to  be  all  so  gay  and 
glad?  But  ah!  and  ah!  where,  in  what  business  of 
this  hard  world,  is  not  prosperity  built  upon  the  strug 
gle  of  toiling  men,  who  still  endeavor  their  poor  best, 
and  writhe  and  writhe  under  the  burden  of  their  broth- 1 
ers  above,  till  they  lie  still  under  the  lighter  load  of  their; 
mother  earth? 


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